A passionate Francophile, Hassler incorporated her love for French cuisine and culture into meticulously crafted entrees like duck confit with cherry mostarda atop cauliflower-potato purée, and tagliatelle tossed with shrimp and a tomato sauce infused with saffron.
Hassler balanced these elegant dishes with comfort food shareables like ratatouille and her version of macaroni and cheese made with cheddar and a Parmesan béchamel, garnished with Parmesan crumble.
Plates trimmed with different patterns and other touches that broke restaurant uniformity rules exuded nostalgia and familiarity, making guests feel like they were dining at the home of a family member.
Despite the hodgepodge personality, every detail was by Hassler’s intentional design, says good friend Pat Jasmin, co-owner of Phoenix wine bar and shop Far Away Wine and Provisions
“Everything was about evoking a feeling of a happy place,” Jasmin says. “And she just nailed it.”
Talking about the 'C' word
Hassler grew up in Tempe. After graduating from Arizona State University with a bachelor’s degree in French literature and minors in Italian and Russian, Hassler traveled throughout Europe, honing her food and wine acumen.She opened the well-regarded Italian restaurant Radda-Caffe Bar in Scottsdale in 2003. After it closed in 2008, Hassler worked as a wine representative for a local distributor and a personal chef. She earned her Certified Specialist of Wine certification while becoming an import wine specialist.
Equipped with culinary and wine skills, she opened The Farish House in 2018, in a brick structure built in 1899 that once served as the home of Phoenix’s first city manager William Farish. The cozy and historic setting was the ideal space for Hassler and her creations to thrive in the heart of downtown Phoenix.
Hassler is survived by her husband of 25 years Eric, and their daughter Sydney, 18. As of this reporting, all remembrance of life celebrations are private.
In 2021, Hassler talked about initially hiding her cancer battle to the Phoenix New Times.
“I chose not to talk about it for quite a bit,” she admits. “Restaurants were closing, and people were dealing with the pandemic, and I didn’t want to play the pity card. I also didn’t want people to doubt that Farish House was on solid ground. Maybe that was wrong of me. But a few months into treatment, I began to feel well, and I started talking about my cancer.”
The Phoenix chapter of Let's Talk Womxn included (left to right) Jennifer Caraway of Joy Bus Diner, Tracy Dempsey of TDOriginals/ODV Wines, Charleen Badman of FnB and Lori Hassler of The Farish House.
AZ Women in Food
A kind, rad, badass leader
Many of her professional food and wine colleagues became personal friends, who now mourn the loss of a person they describe as kind, generous and strong. Pastry chef Tracy Dempsey met Hassler several years ago during Hassler’s time in wine sales. But Dempsey got to know Hassler very well in 2020, when they were part of the core group of the Phoenix chapter of Let’s Talk Womxn, a national collaboration of women restaurateurs built to empower each other as business owners and peers in cities across the country.
This led to the launch of Arizona Women in Food in 2021, a group of fellow chefs and business owners that did collaborations throughout the Valley creating a strong support network.
Hassler took the reins of both organizations, which have since become inactive as Hassler focused on her health.
“Lori is a great leader, she takes charge and does it with such kindness and generosity,” says Dempsey, still speaking of her friend in present tense.
Dempsey immediately bonded with Hassler over their mutual love of all things French, including being fluent in the romantic language. “She was so sweet, funny, had a wicked sense of humor… And her food was beautiful.”
Dempsey, the owner of Tracy Dempsey Originals and ODV Wines in Tempe, recalls joining group Zoom meetings during the pandemic with Hassler and other chefs. Everyone was in their living room or the dining room of their closed restaurant focusing on the meeting. But Hassler was multitasking with her phone propped up while she was chopping and getting her prep ready for takeout orders.
“She said, ‘I’ve got this meeting but I’ve also got food to get out,’” Dempsey says. “She’s a badass.”
In 2020, Hassler was diagnosed with Stage 4 ovarian cancer with tumors in her spine and brain. She continued to work through chemotherapy and appeared to have triumphed over the health obstacles that failed to slow her down.
“She was very strong through everything she was going through… she took it in stride,” says Dempsey, who visited Hassler a few days before she passed. “She touched the lives of so many people. She was loved.”
Jennifer Caraway, chef and founder of The Joy Bus, also became friends with Hassler through Let’s Talk Womxn and Arizona Women in Food. An interest in the obscure old school California punk band Redd Kross was something else they had in common.
“She was the only one who ever shared my love for Redd Kross, so she was cool,” Caraway says. “She was rad.”
Caraway named her non-profit that delivers fresh and healthy meals to cancer patients after her friend Joy, who also passed away after a battle with ovarian cancer.
Caraway credits Hassler’s leadership of both groups and bringing women chefs and restaurateurs together during the pandemic. The groups provided a forum to chat about their struggles, how to achieve success in unprecedented times and keep their businesses alive.
“The amount of work she put in to help us speaks to her character, who she was as a person,” Caraway says. “She was so calm and kind even under pressure. I would aspire to be that calm and kind.”
A vision becomes reality
Far Away Wine co-owner Jasmin met Hassler in 2014, when Hassler was a wine representative and Jasmin was working for a wine supplier. It was common for her to spend a day with a sales rep, and the two hit it off on day one.“She’s one of those people who you feel like you’ve known forever,” Jasmin says.
Before getting into the wine supply industry, Jasmin had run her own restaurant and, like Hassler, had to close it due to circumstances beyond her control. They bonded over the trials and tribulations.
They later worked for the same distributor and their friendship strengthened. When Hassler told Jasmin she wanted to return to restaurants and open her own, it inspired her to get back into it as well. The result is Far Away Wine and Provisions, which features Hassler’s Farish House Brandied Chicken Liver Pate on its menu.
When Hassler decided on the brick house as the location for her new venture, she asked Jasmin to meet her there. Hassler said she wanted to do something different with her independent one-off restaurant. She wanted to preserve the history of the 19th Century space. She researched the ink colors that were used at the time and painted every room in a color that was used in the 1890s. Opting for traditional champagne coupes instead of modern flutes was another vintage nod.
“She already had this folder of her vision for everything that it was,” Jasmin recalls.
Jasmin talks about how Hassler was still working and focused on her restaurant even during the last weeks of her life.
When Jasmin dropped off posole from Richardson’s a couple of weeks before her friend's death, Hassler informed her that she was going to go to the restaurant because they were launching a new menu.
A week before she died, Hassler asked a friend to bring her to The Farish House so she could take photos of new items recently added to the menu.
“She wanted to make sure everything was exactly how she wanted,” Jasmin says. “She was so passionate… her business was her dream.”
Hassler’s pride and joy was her daughter Sydney, a singer and actress who will be entering college on the East Coast this fall. Jasmin attended Sydney’s final play at Chaparral High School, where she was the lead in "Anastasia."
“Lori’s face was beaming the entire time. I’ve never seen her happier,” says Jasmin, who was with Hassler in the hospital a few weeks ago when her doctor asked if she had any goals.
“She quickly replied, ‘I want to see my daughter off to college,’" Jasmin recalls. "I really wish she could have.”
The Farish House will continue to operate with Hassler’s capable team running the show.
“She had this generosity of spirit and was someone who brought people together,” Jasmin says. “The best way to honor her is for people to keep supporting it and keep her dream going.”
