Staff pose before evening service at Rhum Corner on Jan. 26. Left to right: Chrisnise Souffrant, Tyler Walsh, Jose Souffrant, Roland Jean, Kenzie Burkel, and Jen Agg.jenna marie wakani/The Globe and Mail
One evening in late January, Jen Agg and her husband, the artist Roland Jean, are playfully squabbling over the origin story of Rhum Corner, their Haitian restaurant on Dundas Street West, which recently celebrated 10 years in business. We’re in the couple’s elegant home, the soft light from a lamp of Jean’s design illuminates the bluish-grey walls and enviably cool mid-century modern furniture – not the viral vintage pieces that pervade Instagram but the kind that reflects their eclectic, relaxed taste. A decade later, that same sensibility has made Rhum a certifiable sensation in a city with a white-hot restaurant scene.
Agg has served her refreshing homemade spritzes, a concoction of simple syrup, the juice of one tangerine, “three to four ounces of a good but not great rosé, a few ice cubes and topped with, and this is really key, it’s the best topper … President’s Choice orange cream soda flavour sparkling water.”
Here’s where we land on how it all began. Around 2012, Jean would play Haitian music every Friday night at Cocktail Bar, Agg’s 26-seat bar opposite what was then Hoof Raw Bar, Agg’s ambitious yet ill-fated seafood restaurant – all while running a covert operation: serving guests rum and cokes, free of charge. “Nobody wanted me there,” Jean jokes in his Haitian accent. “He’d have his little rum corner setup. He hands like six people rum and cokes. No tips, no sales,” chimes Agg. “I don’t care about that. I want the vibes; I want you to be happy. I’m not a bottom-line kinda person. That’s why we can’t make any money in the restaurant business!”
The couple, who have been together 19 years, always had it in the back of their minds to open a restaurant that celebrated Haitian food and culture in the same way that Café Habana in New York did with Cuban cuisine when it first opened in the 1990s. And the moment Chris Nuttall-Smith’s savage review of Raw Bar in this newspaper hit the presses, the clock started ticking. After about 11 months, Jean turned to Agg and told her that Raw Bar wasn’t working and that she needed to close the restaurant – and she did, the very next day. “That was it,” she recalls. “We started renovating, and we renovated that space with our bare hands.” In September of 2013, Rhum Corner opened its doors in the same space.
Chef Jose Souffrant prepares Griot.jenna marie wakani/The Globe and Mail
Now, if Agg’s perennially packed establishments are any indication of her financial success, she’s soaring, despite the pandemic, high inflation and the city’s fickle food scene.
Rhum is Agg’s favourite child in her family, which includes Bar Vendetta, Le Swan and Grey Gardens. After 27 years in the food and beverage business, she’s also expanding her empire northward to Geary Avenue – a once-industrial corridor in the Davenport neighbourhood just east of the Junction Triangle, that’s now dotted with wine bars, coffee shops and an artisanal ice cream-slash-sub shop – with the opening of her sixth spot, General Public, later this year. (She’s mum on the concept so far.) As for why she’s opening a new restaurant now? “I don’t know,” she says over text. “I guess I hate having savings and needed to dump them all into a high-risk project!”
The restaurant industry remains full of risk, but for Agg and Jean, Rhum is a true labour of love. “We’re definitely very respectful of each other’s ideas,” says Agg. “And I think we’re our own best critics. Roland always wants to show me his painting …”
The mention of Jean’s painting dredges up the couple’s painful recent history. Jean stopped painting after a stroke in 2020, the fallout of which Agg detailed in a poignant Hazlitt essay (and will touch on in her second memoir. Her first, I Hear She’s a Real Bitch, was published in 2017). His striking, large-scale portraits adorn their home, as does his custom wallpaper – sketches in the style of pinups – in the bathrooms at Rhum Corner. “I am sad about this,” Jean says wistfully. “Because she is the first person who will tell me when I paint … what is good, what is bad, and I always trust her.”
Agg’s loyal diners trust her taste, too. It feels like Agg has a sixth sense, some preternatural talent for predicting the tastes of a capricious and discerning public. In fact, Agg is a tastemaker, but she doesn’t have a crystal ball. She operates intuitively, and her restaurants, she says, are a form of art. (You can’t spell restaurateur without auteur.) Whether you interpret that sentiment as pretentious or sincere depends on your perception of Agg’s public persona. But should that matter? Shouldn’t your respect for Agg and her accomplishments supersede that?
The dining space at Rhum Corner.jenna marie wakani/The Globe and Mail
Agg has long used Instagram and Twitter as a megaphone to call out the sexism endemic in the restaurant business, with a persistent spotlight on how unmitigated machismo can engender an abusive culture. In doing so, she’s earned as much support as she has scorn – hence the title of her first memoir. Online, as in real life, Agg is both jocular and dead serious; her Instagram bio famously reads “Battle Ready Baby” next to a sword emoji. Has there been any progress for gender parity in the industry? “I don’t think in my lifetime, I’m going to see the kind of equality that I want to see,” Agg says judiciously. “And I think I’ve accepted that.”
She is also justifiably resentful of the fact that publicly rooting for Team Agg may prove unpopular in the industry. “It doesn’t matter how much I support restaurants that I actually like – that are owned by mostly white men – they will never support me back,” she says. “But I think it’s a fear of supporting me. Because there’s just such a general sense of like yeah, she’s, you know …” letting whatever digs about her “reputation” fill in the silence. Other chefs are happy to repost Agg’s Instagram stories of her praising their restaurants, but won’t reciprocate the love, she says. “And I just have to live with that. And that’s why my next book is called They’ll Toast Me When I’m Dead.” (No publishing date just yet.)
Professionally, Agg is independent in every sense. Without investors, she literally can’t afford to fail. Her outspokenness, then, is all the more audacious: The stakes to succeed are higher for her, and she refuses to kowtow to anyone. “My restaurants are for anyone, but they’re not for everyone,” she says. “And because of who I am publicly, my restaurants are extremely self-selecting, which is so great.” In other words, if you like Agg herself, you support Agg’s restaurants. If not, you don’t. She likes it that way.
Agg considers Rhum an anomaly, though, partly because of Jean’s involvement and because it’s Caribbean. It’s a collaboration, a joint venture; not a singularly Jen Agg vision. “If I’m ever talking to people in Rhum who are new to Rhum, I’ll be like, this is not my restaurant, I’m a white girl in this restaurant,” she says. “Without centring myself too much, people do try to separate us sometimes, like, oh, Jen, I don’t know, but Roland seems really cool.” In other words, Rhum draws Agg agnostics.
After spritzes, we walk the two minutes to Rhum. We’re sat at the bar; there’s not an empty seat in the house. Jean, as usual, is manning the music on a reel-to-reel, and for someone who allegedly doesn’t do chitchat, people seem to gravitate toward him. Agg is ordering us a plate of griot, a Haitian dish of marinated pork shoulder, and fried fritters. (Ever the exacting boss, Agg sent back the first round of fritters, but approved of the perfect, doughy texture the second time around.)
Rhum means a lot to a lot of people – but it’s precious to Agg and Jean. Young customers appreciate how affordable it is, and older Haitian and Caribbean diners in their 40s and 50s love the authentic food, thanks to Jose Souffrant, Rhum’s chef since 2018, who is also Haitian.
But this is Agg and Jean’s baby, and they want to reach diners who are after real Haitian and Caribbean food – not those who just stumbled upon a cool downtown restaurant looking for a meal. “When people come to the restaurant and ask to see a menu, it drives Roland crazy,” says Agg. “He’ll kind of actively tell the servers ‘don’t show it to them! No, they should know what this is, and if they don’t know what this is, they’re not going to stay anyway.’ And like nine times out of 10, he’s absolutely right. People that are coming to like browse the menu probably aren’t going to stay.”