Martini Blu may remade into a Fhima restaurant with Mediterranean flair.
Restaurant-chef David Fhima said another Zahtar by Fhima may go where Martini Blu is located in the Grand Hotel in downtown Minneapolis. He opened a Zahtar at the Eden Prairie outpost of Life Time Fitness, which is open only to athletic club members. A downtown Zahtar would be open to the public.
"That's what is planned right now," he said. "My work right now with Life Time is really to create synergy between eating well and working out. They go hand and hand.
"I've got to give Bahram [Akradi, rhymes with "hottie," Life Time's CEO] credit. I've known him for many years and we are very good friends. [Akradi had] the vision to know if you work out and don't eat well, it doesn't work. Your body needs to be taken care of externally and internally; he wants to do it not just by feeding you but with epicurean, gourmet food. More natural and true to the brand of whole foods. That's sort of the premise of the work I am doing at Life Time."
If that's the premise of those Zahtar drumsticks, the food makes a delicious transition from assumption to consumption.
"That was a free-range chicken drumstick, but we call it a tulip," he said. "We push the meat down, to look like a tulip, take the skin off; we bake it in a combination of Moroccan and Jamaican spices. That's a perfect example of something that's completely healthy, no fat."
Those tulips are healthy right up until you stick them in the gorgonzola dip that comes with them. Fhima just laughed. "I am all about satisfying the senses," he said. "A food that doesn't look right or smell right is like a beautiful woman with terrible clothes."
While Fhima is very charming, one has to wonder how he keeps backers, and he has a bunch, because there have been a few business reversals.