Restaurants
Out of India
By Dee Hon published Apr 1, 2008
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.
