Restaurateur leans on family's Jewish heritage in Whyte Avenue cafe

Looking for his next venturein Edmonton's food scene, restaurateur Charles Rothmanreachedback to his roots.

Rothman, born in So Paulo, Brazil, leaned on his Jewish heritageto create the menu for the RoosterCafe and Kitchen, 10732 Whyte Ave.

Theinspiration came, in part, from the memory of his grandparents who survived the Holocaust.

"My grandparents were young Jews in their 20s when the Nazis occupied Czechoslovakia in 1939," Rothman told CBC's Radio Active.

Rothman said they fled to the Swiss Alps where theysecretly married,but were captured by the Nazis in 1942 and heldinseparate concentration camps.

Rothman's grandmother,held at theAuschwitz IIBirkenaucamp,survived, though barely,until liberation in 1945.

"My grandmother was apparently in a pile of naked bodies all assumed to be dead, but a Red Cross worker happened to see movement," Rothman said. "They pulled my grandmother's body out of the pile and revived her."

Rothman said she weighed 48 pounds at the time of her rescue.

After the war, his grandparents fled to Chile, where they lived the rest of their lives. Rothman's father was born there and worked in the hospitality business.

He opened a hotel in So Paulo, where Rothman was born, but the familymoved to Toronto when Rothman was four so he could attend school in Canada.

Rothmanleft forthe Edmonton area in 2006, where he workedfor various companies as a food consultant.

When he was approached to partner ina restaurant, Rothman jumped at thechallenge.

Bagels and challah

As co-owner of Rooster Cafe and Kitchen, Rothman knew he had a prime location on Whyte Avenue near 107th Street for Old Strathcona's brunch lovers.

"We felt that Whyte Avenue would still be a fantastic place to have a new, modern breakfast and lunch spot," Rothman said.

But with so many other restaurants in the area doing the same, Rothman needed to set his restaurant apart.

"We were not in a position to go head-to-head with all these new breakfast and lunch places," he said. "We needed to do something that really made us unique and maybe offered something that was hard to find in Edmonton."

Looking back onhis family historyand the hardships his grandparents faced as Holocaust survivors, he decidedto assert his Jewish background into the menu.

He started by bringing inbagels from Toronto's Gryfe Bagels and using challah bread as the basis for some of his dishes.

"I was dying for some good bagels out here," Rothman said. "A lot of [the food] can be deemed 'Jewish food,' but in a lot of cases it has a lot of crossover with other cultures that came out of Eastern Europe especially the Ukrainian culture."

Though Rothman estimates there are only about 5,000 Jewish people in the Edmonton area, Rooster has been successful.

"We wanted to take a step back and see how it would be received and also see if the Jewish community would embrace it," he said. "Being about three months now into our new business, it's been very, very well-received."

Thecrossover of cultures has led to success in the Edmonton area in general and as Rothmancontinues to run his Jewish-inspired restaurant, he remains inspired bythe strugglehis family was forced to go through to get him here in the first place.

• Read Twyla Campbell'sreview of RoosterCafe and Kitchen this Saturday at 12 p.m.