Out of India

Influenced by myriad traditions
and cultures, India’s cuisine is
wonderfully rich and varied. Until recently, food from the North has dominated, but thanks to a southern renaissance, we now get to enjoy the subcontinent’s culinary diversity

By Dee Hon

Integrity. I run into the word whenever I eat or discuss Indian food. Sure enough, it’s right on the menu at newly opened Saravanaa Bhavan on Broadway: “Authentic South Indian cuisine.”

“I hate that word,” says my lunch companion, Meeru Dhalwala, as she helps herself to the buffet of classic South Indian dishes like channa, idli, sambar, and other assorted treats. Dhalwala is half of the husband-and-wife team behind the ceaselessly celebrated Vij’s and Rangoli restaurants just off Granville. (The other half is her husband, Vikram Vij.) No one would ever call their recipes “authentic”—in the context of their genre-bending restaurants, the word is oppressive. Vij’s earned its fame by fusing Indian flavours with local ingredients and contemporary cooking techniques; Rangoli does a more casual version of the same. They’re tossing “authenticity” aside to create food that’s more connected to immediate influences than to an imagined, far-away past.

Yet the lunch we’re enjoying today at Saravanaa Bhavan (a chain of South Indian restaurants with locations in eight countries worldwide, including a whopping 19 in its hometown of Chennai) encapsulates something else happening to Indian food, both in Vancouver and on a global scale. Northern-style food—with its rich, stew-like curries and tandoor-cooked meats—has long been synonymous with Indian cuisine in these parts, so much so that bastardized versions of Punjabi-style samosas and butter chicken turn up in 7-Elevens and Costco freezers. But after decades of a northern-style stranglehold, southern cooking is storming Vancouver kitchens.

I discovered Indian food as a child, at a Calgary restaurant called Taj Mahal. I tasted a masala of spices and a richness of textures I’d never imagined during my upbringing of char siu and cheeseburgers: tandoori chicken, basmati rice cooked with cardamom, the velvety potato-and-spinach curry saag aloo. I was convinced I’d never taste anything finer.

Northern Indian food is, at heart, food descended from the courts of the legendary Mughal emperors, whose pursuit of luxury knew no bounds. These rulers controlled northern India, but had ethnic roots in what is now Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. The clay tandoor oven in particular has Central Asian lineage. Imported chefs came from everywhere the Mughal empire touched. Europeans, particularly the Portuguese, introduced foods like potatoes, tomatoes, and even chili peppers from their conquests in South America. (Before 1500, the hottest Indian spice was black pepper.) The now-standard Indian vindaloo is a corruption of the Portuguese carne de vinho e alhos—pork cooked in wine vinegar. You can sample the progenitors of what we now call northern Indian cuisine in the kebabs and palaws at the Afghan Horsemen near Granville Island, and at Persian restaurants on the North Shore.

India’s food is as varied as its array of religions, landscapes, and cultures. Recipes differ from village to village, even from house to house, but the line between northern food (those marinated tandoor meats and butter-rich curries) and

southern food (pancake-like breads and thinner, more soup-like curries) is bold and clear. Overall, southern dishes are lighter and more suited to everyday dining, with sharp tangy tamarind, citrusy-and-bitter curry leaves, velvety coconut, and generous doses of chilies the dominant flavours. The dosa, a crêpe-like pancake made from a fermented batter of rice, urad dal, and water, is perhaps the region’s most famous export; idlis are steamed cakes made with similar batter. Both are usually served with sambar, a lentil-based stew, and a variety of chutneys. Nooru Mahal, a six-year-old Fraser Street spot run by Sri Lankan native Raj Aiyathurai, is a stalwart, and one of the city’s original southern Indian restaurants—regional devotees love Aiyathurai’s recipes, which come not from the generic “South” but from Sri Lanka in particular.

Back at Saravanaa Bhavan, our conversation turns to a menu item at Rangoli. Dhalwala has created a dish of black chickpea, pea, and onion cakes in a spicy coconut curry. I assumed the dish was inspired by a southern recipe—not so, explains Dhalwala. She had no qualms about adding southern coconut to a dish with Punjabi spices. She didn’t grow up in India, and thus doesn’t feel burdened by its conventions. A lot of the fuss about what is and isn’t authentic, she says, has to do with marketing. No restaurant owner questioned here would dare admit his food isn’t authentic. In India, such rules are too rigid for such a varied cuisine. “If you actually get an Indian chef,” she says with a laugh, “he’ll say, ‘I don’t know if it’s authentic. It’s mine.’ ”

Vancouver boasts countless Indian restaurants, thanks to the region’s 150,000-strong Indo-Canadian community. Most of the immigrants, and their restaurants, are Punjabi, and so you might think the quality of the food would be fantastic by sheer force of numbers. But India’s restaurant culture has only recently blossomed in the wake of globalization. Historically, social and religious beliefs restricted not only the foods people ate, but whom they ate with and the kinds of people they would allow to serve them. An upper-caste Brahmin, for example, would never put lips to a cup that had been used by a Dalit, who belongs to the lowest rung.

Modern restaurant culture grew in the 1920s and 1930s out of the necessity to feed a swelling class of urban office workers. Even today, Indian restaurants are mainly utilitarian eateries, not places to seek pleasure in a meal; home-cooked meals remain the best way to experience Indian food. In Mumbai, deliverymen transport tens of thousands of homemade lunches each day from wives and mothers to their working men, in a network as intricate as an ant colony.

This shallow history of restaurant culture in India means that many establishments in Vancouver are started by immigrants with business, or other non-culinary, backgrounds. There is little prestige in becoming a chef, so young Indians don’t typically aspire to the profession; for the most part, restaurants here are established by people who can work a spreadsheet but not a clay oven.

So where do you find really great Indian food in Vancouver? We’ve got some ideas.

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