‘GENEROSITY BREEDS GENEROSITY,’ CHEF SAYS
Restaurateur reflects on his culinary journey from India to Canada
Vij: A Chef’s One-Way Ticket to Canada with Indian Spices in His Suitcase
Vikram Vij, with Nancy Macdonald Penguin Canada Vikram Vij is the consummate host. I vividly remember my first visit to his restaurant nearly 20 years ago — waiting for a table has never been so delicious. The crowd spilled out onto Vancouver’s 11th Avenue and there was Vij himself. Greeting people as they waited, offering snacks and bottomless chai in the spirit of warmth and welcome he’s now known for.
“Generosity breeds generosity,” the 52-year-old chef and entrepreneur says in an interview over coffee in Toronto. He recently released his memoir, Vij: A Chef’s One-Way Ticket to Canada with Indian Spices in His Suitcase.
“I didn’t do this because it was good for business. It wasn’t. How can giving away food and chai be good for business? If you took my business plan and went to a bank, they would shred the sh*t out of it. But I did it because I genuinely felt so touched and honoured that people were waiting for our food.”
Vij’s Restaurant has always had a no-reservation policy. Tom Cruise, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Martha Stewart have all waited their turn for a table. The late Robin Williams even put on an impromptu comedy show in the courtyard one evening, Vij recalls.
In his memoir, Vij shares stories of his childhood in Amritsar, Delhi and Mumbai, and years spent studying hotel management in Austria, where he began his career. He recounts how one dish in particular led him to Canada — goulash seasoned with spices he had brought with him from India.
While working in Austria, he was asked to cook for Ivor Petrak, then general manager of the Banff Springs Hotel. That innovative goulash garnered him a job offer in Alberta, where he would quickly rise through the ranks at the Banff Springs Hotel and golf course, ultimately moving to Vancouver and establishing a restaurant empire.
“If (my memoir) can inspire somebody to say, ‘If a line cook like Vikram Vij can do it, so can I,’ I would have done my job,” Vij says. “I really believe in passing on the baton of knowledge and experience. The world out there is so tough … I’m still struggling and working as hard as I was 20 years ago, if not harder.”
He has been running Vij’s (now on Cambie Street) with ex-wife Meeru Dhalwala since 1994. Shortly after they married, they divided responsibilities according to their skills: Dhalwala managed the kitchen, Vij the front of house.
The pair expanded with sister restaurant Rangoli in 2004, Vij’s Sutra in Victoria, Vij’s Railway Express food truck, and a line of Vij’s at Home products. In 2014, Vij opened My Shanti, his first solo restaurant, in Surrey, B.C.
“It’s Meeru who created dishes in the back that were so brilliant and so delicious that I was able to go out and say, ‘You’ve got to try this,’ ” Vij says. “She created the context.”
The first menu from the 11th Avenue location is included in Vij’s memoir, bearing the apt title Vij’s Curry Art Gallery. Dishes include Bengali-style cod on basmati rice with raita, rapini and homemade paneer with red bell peppers and chapati, and salmon in golden puff bread with sesame-coconut sauce.
Dhalwala also established kitchens entirely staffed by immigrant women. Her own mother Omi was “deeply isolated by her move to the United States,” and Dhalwala wanted to create opportunities for women like her. To this day, everything served at Rangoli and Vij’s is made by immigrant women who love to cook but have “zero (previous) restaurant or chef experience.”
“We both believe in it and it works well. It really made sense to me — they have the best bloody hands. They grew up cooking that food,” Vij says, adding that staff members don’t leave “because there’s a huge sense of pride and equality in the restaurants.”
In 1994, when Vij first opened the restaurant in a former falafel shop on Broadway, he writes that his father said to him:
“Just give them butter chicken and tikka masala. White people can’t tell the difference between one curry and another.”
He says his goal was never to open a restaurant strictly to make money, nor to offer bargain-priced buffets of expected dishes. Rather, his mission has always been “to bring awareness to the cooking and culture I left behind,” he says.
From the beginning, Vij and Dhalwala have applied spices and techniques from different regions of India to locally available produce, seafood, meat and poultry. He describes this as “purely a village-style mentality,” saying, “Why buy frozen fish from India when I have beautiful, sustainable seafood in (my own backyard)? Why do I need to bring in a beer from India called Kingfisher just for the sake of it when I have local, beautiful IPAs available here?”
At first, he writes, “people didn’t get the food” and he and Dhalwala weren’t quite sure who their customers would be. So they created dishes that were in line with what they themselves wanted to eat. Dhalwala based her recipe for bottomless chai, one of the restaurant’s early successes, on her mother’s recipe. And she and Vij collaborated on a signature dish “to rival butter chicken”: lamb “popsicles” with fenugreek curry cream.
“I knew my palate was good. I had travelled, I had cooked, and I knew what I wanted. What I didn’t want to do was only cater to Indians or only cater to non-Indians. I’ve always hated that segregation. I grew up in a country that has so much prejudice. I’m so tired of hearing, ‘Well, they’re Muslims, they’re Hindus …’ I want people not to have that prejudice,” Vij says.
“Even at school in Austria, I was segregated. ‘Oh, you’re brown. You cook food for the staff and the managers.’ Even though (I was trained in French cuisine), I was never allowed to cook for the dining room because it was not acceptable … So, (the food we made is) how I like to eat. Not as an Indian but as just Vikram Vij. That’s it. That’s what I wanted to cook.”
Vij says his ultimate goal is to encourage more Canadians to cook Indian food at home. He and Dhalwala have co-written three cookbooks, and he recently partnered with the not-for-profit Arts Umbrella to offer culinary arts workshops aimed at teaching teenagers how to cook.
“I want people to be able to cook Indian food at home the way they cook pizza and pasta today,” Vij says.
“I (would) have no problem being homeless one day — I could be passing a pot around in the street. And if somebody said, ‘That man changed the way Indian food is perceived in this country,’ I would be honoured.”
Why buy frozen fish from India when I have beautiful, sustainable seafood in (my own backyard)?