'Ms. Marvel' Musician Ali Sethi Calls Toronto A Top 3 Food Destination & Here's His Fav Spot

“My stomach is a food destination for all food and beverage,” Pakistani-American musician Ali Sethi jokes as we chat about food hotspots on the eve of his second sold out Toronto concert this week at the Aga Khan Museum.

The burning question is: does Toronto make it to his top three food destinations, having spent a good part of his week here? “Oh yeah, it does! Karahi Boys was fantastic downtown,” he recommends. Besides the desi food in The 6ix, Sethi's list stays loyal to his current city of residence, New York City (“I love Jackson Heights”), and rounds off with East London.

Sethi, 38, is obsessed with seafood (“I love that stuff”), good pizza (like a classic New Yorker), and has a newfound appreciation for an unlikely coffee and protein shake combo. (“I find myself seeking it everywhere I go in the world because it gives me my coffee and my protein and my sugar all in one place.”)

I'm slightly disappointed by the exclusion of biryani from his favourite meals, but we do bond over a mutual appreciation for daal — a collective term used to describe pulses/lentils and their wholesome recipes in South Asian cultures.

'Ms Marvel' Musician Ali Sethi On The Success Of ‘Pasoori’ & His Fave Toronto Food Spotwww.youtube.com

But there’s been a recent change to Sethi’s dining habits, and it’s because of a sweet little monster he created himself. “Every time I go to Jackson Heights now, my song Pasoori is playing everywhere. Every third or fourth restaurant I pass is playing Pasoori. And I'm like, I cannot go eat food and listen to my new song. It just makes me feel the two parts of my brain,” he says.

In case you’ve been living under a rock (or stay at arm’s length with pop culture), Sethi has had what we’d call a blockbuster year. His superhit track Pasoori (ft. Shae Gill), which released in February on the Pakistan-based international television franchise Coke Studio, is approaching 300 million views on YouTube. It also became the first Pakistani song to feature on Spotify's "Viral 50 - Global" chart, eventually climbing to the summit in May.

Not only has it been Gen-Z staple on TikTok and IG Reels (“Most of my [new song's] followers are between the ages of 18 and 23,” he tells me), the single scored another massive global win a few weeks back. It was featured on the fourth episode of the trailblazing superhero TV show, Ms. Marvel.

Narrating the story of Marvel Cinematic Universe’s first Muslim mainstream superhero, the six-episode show has received plaudits for its depiction of the India-Pakistan partition in 1947, following the colonial British rule.

“I went to a special Ms. Marvel screening in New York because I was invited by my friend Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy, who directed some of the episodes. I watched two episodes in a movie theatre and I was in tears,” Sethi shares.

In his own words, the show successfully avoided “surface level gesturing at the realms of South Asian life.” Instead, it focussed on subtleties and “philosophical engagement” through the trauma rooted in human history's largest mass migration.

“The site of pain can also be the site of power, that if you can connect with a kind of ancestral memory, if you can tap into it, it can be a source of enormous power, not just this kind of cosmetic and performative hashtag representation," he says.

Given Sethi’s Harvard background and successful history as a former author, the conversation then cascades into more academic pastures as we discuss the meaning of success and how to follow it — erm — successfully. For the sake of avoiding Ms. Marvel spoilers though, I’ll spare you that dialogue.

But what I will tell you is that the man gets Toronto. For starters, he pronounces the name of the city better than most actors in The Man From Toronto.

“I love Toronto. I think it's a kinder, cozier, friendly, friendlier version of the very exciting and big bad city that I live in, which is New York City. I'm being facetious,” he laughs.

“The truth is that Toronto is its own place. I have lots of friends here, from way back – like my childhood in Pakistan. I know lots of musicians who live here. Many of my friends from the US have moved here. So, I find I have a lot of my people in the city, which makes it feel like home.”

And he sure gets it back from the GTA and its huge South Asian immigrant population. Both his concerts were sold out within 20 minutes of the tickets going live, one of the organizers tells me as we wait in the green room for Sethi to finish (it's not chaai tea!).

I ask Sethi about what constitutes a good cup of chaai for him and he replies in a typically articulate and philosophical manner.

“I studied music with Ustad Naseeruddin Sami (a legendary South Asian musician) for many years. One of the most wonderful lessons that he imparted to me over the years was ‘don't rely on words to express everything,'" he says.

“So, learn to also revel in the ineffable pleasures of life. And the perfect cup of chaai is one of those ineffable pleasures. There is no amount of wording that can convey to you what makes it what it is out there.”

And that my dear readers, is Ali Sethi for you -- the Harvard grad, the author, the superhit musician and a poetic lover of chaai.