In a recent Spectador exclusive interview, we spoke with Fac Shack Head Chef Marcus Farkus to better understand his inspiration for the popular dining spot’s unique meals.
“Well honestly, they told me they wanted it to be an Indian food dining option. I’ve never actually eaten Indian food though. I subsist solely on chicken,” remarked Farkus. Diagnosed as a child with Alpha-gal syndrome, a strong aversion to red meat, Farkus grew up eating chicken for most meals. He then discovered his passion for cooking in his late teens.
“I knew that I loved chicken, and I wanted to learn about all the ways I could cook it,” he stated. Farkus began dabbling with cooking chicken in a pan, the oven, and even sometimes on a grill.
“When Columbia reached out about the opportunity, I was ecstatic. Frankly, though, it ended up being a lot of work,” Farkus noted. “I had to fit my approach to the Indian cooking style they wanted, which meant learning to cook chicken in all sorts of imaginative ways. I learned to cook chicken in red sauce, orange sauce, with pepper, over lentils, and in reddish-orange sauce. It was a tough learning curve, but I think I’ve now mastered the craft of Indian cooking,” Farkus proudly remarked.
Since the surging popularity of Fac Shack, Farkus has been tasked with taking his chicken recipes global.
“Yeah now they want me making Thai, Greek, Chinese, and Italian food! It’s definitely challenging getting all those cuisines right, but the good thing is they all almost exclusively eat chicken, so I’ll just have to learn about the different colored sauces for each cuisine,” claimed Farkus. “I’m thinking Thai’s yellow, Chinese is orange, Greek’s green or some shit, and Italian’s obviously red. That sounds pretty close, right?”
