Restaurateur Tiffani Faison is taking things 'one week at a time'

Chef/Restauranteur Tiffani Faison — FILE — Chef/restauranteur Tiffani Faison poses for a portrait in her Italian restaurant Orfano in Boston on Aug. 2, 2019.

Mackenzie Farkus is a production assistant on Boston Public Radio. She graduated from Simmons University with a B.A. in journalism, where she was the editor in chief of the student newspaper, The Simmons Voice.

January 18, 2022

Updated August 07, 2023

The pandemic has forced many Boston-area restaurateurs to revise their business plans in order to stay afloat during the pandemic. Tiffani Faison joined Boston Public Radio on Tuesday to share how the pandemic has impacted her restaurants.

“Truthfully, it's a ‘one day at a time’ situation — it's a ‘one week at a time’ situation,” Faison said. “We still plan, but we get the rug ripped out from underneath us quite a bit.”

Last October, Faison announced that her six-year-old restaurant Tiger Mama would close to make way for a new restaurant in 2022. While she remains tight-lipped on what will replace the Southeast Asian-inspired eatery, Faison did say that changes to the Fenway neighborhood prompted her to re-evaluate the restaurant. Faison’s other Fenway venues — Italian restaurant Orfano, snack bar Fool’s Errand and barbecue restaurant Sweet Cheeks — all remain open.

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“I would never close [Tiger Mama] without knowing what was next,” Faison told hosts Jim Braude and Margery Eagan. “So for me, it was a combination of a lot of things. Tiger had a really great six years, the neighborhood's changed a bit, I've changed a bit, [and] there's things that I want out of a restaurant that I'd like to put in place.”

High Street Place, a food hall in Boston’s Financial District that is set to open in March, will have three Faison venues: Bubble Bath, a champagne and wine bar with gourmet popcorn and hot dogs; Tenderoni’s, a ‘70s- and ‘80s-themed fast-casual restaurant serving pizza and grinders; and Dive Bar, a New Orleans-meets-New England seafood bar. The food hall was originally slated to open in fall 2019.

“[High Street Place is] in the financial district, which was a really good idea two years ago,” Faison said, referencing the now empty office buildings in the area due to remote work. “There are three spaces that are built out and ready to go. They've been ready for a year and a half.”

But if there’s anything Faison has learned throughout the pandemic, it’s patience.

“Everything normalizes — even chaos normalizes at some point, and you get better with just understanding that ‘I can't control this,’” Faison said. “We can do what we can.”

Tiffani Faison is an award-winning chef and restaurateur.