Montreal Chef Antonio Park to Open Restaurant With NHL Legend Jaromir Jagr

Hockey players love Antonio Park's food so much that they apparently want to open restaurants with him. Not just any hockey players either—a new profile of Park by Lesley Chesterman for Nuvo magazine discloses that future Hall of Famer Jaromir Jagr, together with fellow Czech player Petr Svoboda, will partner with the star Montreal chef on a restaurant project slated for 2016 in Prague. At age 43, Jagr is the top point scorer among active NHL players and the most productive European player who has ever played the game.

Chesterman, the food critic for the Montreal Gazette, offers a comprehensive portrait of Park in her article—we get snippets of his childhood in Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil; early stints at Montreal restaurants; and his time at culinary school in Tokyo. But one excerpt divulges Park's grand ambitions more than any other.

Park is planning on opening a pastry shop/café next door to Park. Plans are also under way to launch restaurants in 2016 in both Toronto and Prague. "I feed a lot of Czech hockey players," says Park. His partners on the Prague project are none other than star hockey players Petr Svoboda and Jaromír Jágr.

A pastry shop. A restaurant in Toronto. A restaurant in Prague. But wait, that's not all. Park has hinted before that he'd like to open a Korean restaurant in Montreal and muses on the theoretical concept even further with Chesterman: "I’m imagining a farm-to-table restaurant, and I see a kitchen staffed by all Korean ladies who put their heart and love into it. I want people to know Korean food."