THE JOB
CRAFTING
COMMUNITY
STAY GOLD
Restaurants by Arsalun Tafazoli ' s Consortium Holdings dare to be different , down to the smallest detail , or an entire wall of skulls .
Social spacemaker Arsalun Tafazoli disrupts the dining scene .
BY JARRETT HALEY
RESTAURANTS TYPICALLY aim to get you fed — not make you think . But when you see a no-ketchup manifesto on the menu of a burger joint , or an elegant steakhouse sporting gilt-framed portraits of gangsta rappers , you can ’ t help but notice something different going on .
That difference is part of the program for Arsalun Tafazoli ’ 06 , who never expected to become a restaurateur , let alone such a radical one . Like many college students , Tafazoli was once a kid with no idea what to do with his life . As much as he enjoyed Muir College and his political science and philosophy studies , equally interesting to him were the social dynamics he saw play out every night while he worked security in local bars .
“ I got to see firsthand the impact of environment on behavior ,” he says . “ I ’ d see people I knew and respected completely change . And that ’ s just what tends to happen in places that create an atmosphere that all too easily leads you down a thoughtless path .”
This was the first of a pair of observations that would ultimately lead Tafazoli to his calling . The second would come halfway around the world , when he took a side trip to Germany while studying abroad . “ I went to a beer festival in Munich ,” he says , “ and three breweries being recognized there as the best in the world were from my hometown of San Diego — I hadn ’ t even heard of two of them .”
The fact that world-class craft breweries were right in his backyard made Tafazoli consider the social offerings of San Diego , which at the time were predominantly made up of vacuous bars like those he had once known , most of them still oblivious to the area ’ s burgeoning craft scene .
Tafazoli immersed himself in the local craft beer culture and found richness and complexity — something worth caring about and paying attention to , just as one would the subtleties of wine . Moreover , the culture of craft was the antithesis of what he saw playing out in those bars he ’ d known before . It was the beginnings of the “ intelligent consumption ” concept that
46 TRITON | SPRING 2018