Who creates the dishes?

Mostly my wife creates the dishes now. Maybe I have one or two dishes on the menu no more than that. She’ll make something up and ask me what I think. Then I’ll say do this to it, do that to it or don’t do anything to it, it’s perfect. It’s a very collaborative effort. It’s like a partnership for raising children. The dishes are our babies.

What should we order?

Your staff is all female and vegetarian. How do they taste the meat dishes in your menu?

They taste the sauce but never taste the meat. They’ll taste the saltiness that’s required. Usually around 12, 12:30 in the afternoon once they made the dishes I’m here or Meeru is here or Mike (one of my managers) is here. We usually taste the dishes to see if they’re perfectly flavoured. Otherwise in the evening in the kitchen I’m always tasting. I’m always improvising on the dishes.

How often does the menu change?

Every 2-3 months it changes. We left this one on for a little longer because of the Olympics. The way it works is that the oldest stuff goes but some of the staple stuff stays. The lamb popsicles and beef short ribs stay on the menu. It gives us the flexibility of people coming in and saying “Oh, we heard about the lamb popsicles” – they want that. The creativity comes from other dishes that are not lamb popsicles. If four people are sitting, they’ll order one lamb popsicle and will have 2-3 other new additions.

How was it for you to start a restaurant in Vancouver?

I started 16 years ago, in 1994. The first 3 months were tough. I opened it, cooking, served all by myself. After the 3 months and we got a good review from a food writer – we haven’t looked it back. But having said that, I’ve also worked extremely hard in making sure that I’m on the floor and taking these people’s hands and guiding them through the menu and educating them through the food.

I haven’t had the attitude – “I know what I’m doing, eat it!”. I’ve had more of an attitude of, “Hey you came to my house, I will educate you on how the food should be served and eaten.” I don’t mind going up to people and saying, “Hey why are you eating this bread with knife and fork? Use your hands”.

It’s tough though. I’ll be honest with you, I don’t want anybody to think you can just do it. 16 years have gone by. At the end of the day, I still absolutely love what I do. I get such a thrill out of cooking. I’ve not taken anything for granted. I get a little nostalgic thinking about it. I thought I wasn’t going to make it. I thought I was going to fail because the first three months was really tough for me. Now I have 2 restaurants here and my production facility.

I hear there’s a new restaurant?

I bought a piece of land on Cambie. Vij’s will move there. Rangoli will stay where it is. I’ve come up with a new concept for this restaurant (to replace the original Vij’s). I think it’s time for me to come up with newer things. It just gives me pleasure to do new things and juggling everything. I’m not the type to say “Hey I’ve done it, I’m going to sit on my lulls”. I will be at all four places – 1 hour here, 1 hour there.

I mean, if Obama can run a country at the age of 48, I’m sure I can run a small empire at the age of 45. If he can do it, so can I. That’s my motivation! I saw him last night at midnight giving a speech! It’s midnight and he was so articulate. I admire him so much. I feel like I’ve done nothing compared to what he’s achieved.

Tell us about your new facility at Cloverdale and your new line of frozen food?

The idea of the bags is that it’s home cooking. It’s like if your Mother made you delicious soup and she sent you home with it in a can and put it in the freezer, that’s exactly what we’ve done. There’s no preservatives, there’s no messing around. It’s home cooked meal by the ladies. I would want you to open it up, put it in a pan, heat it up that way instead of a microwave.

When you make pasta, you really don’t make pasta. Just for the fact that you boil pasta, makes you feel like you made the pasta. Even if you take the tomato sauce and put a few vegetables in a pan, it makes you feel like “I made the pasta”. That’s exactly what I want to do. My focus in life has been to bring the awareness of my cuisine up and bring the awareness of my culture up pretty strongly. Once you open up a pouch and put it in the pan and you taste it and you feel you can handle a little more chili or cilantro to it – you can add it. The perception in your mind is, “Oh I made it!”. That way, next time you might not buy the bag but you can buy the spices and start from scratch.

It’s a slow osmosis process of learning how to cook Indian food.

London has a $3 billion Indian food industry. Why isn’t Vancouver like this?

Well, the Indians that went to London went way earlier than the ones that came to Canada. Indians immigration to London started in the 1800s. The Indians in London are way more established than the ones in North America. As a result, the Indian food industry here has not been as strong. It will happen.

In November, I did a fun cooking show with Atul Kochhar and Vivek Singh. I must say that yes, there’s a huge Indian food industry there but there are a lot of mainstream restaurants (butter chicken, chicken tikka masala). There’s probably only 30% of these restaurants that are venturing out and pushing the limits. There’s Veera Swamy, Amaya, Benares, Rasoi – these are the restaurants that have pushed the limits. It takes time. Indian chefs have to travel and study abroad and learn French ways of cooking and incorporate these techniques with Indian flavours.

In North America, other than you, who else is doing this new style of Indian cuisine?

There’s Amaya in Toronto that’s doing similar to what I have done. My good friend Floyd Cardoz in New York at Tabla. He’s doing a great job with that. There’s a few restaurants that are coming up. It’s important for us to understand that without forgetting our cultural roots we need to expand our horizon. We need to move a little bit further. If we don’t, we’ll just be another cuisine that’s tucked under the carpet and not taken seriously.

What should you do to get Indian food to be taken seriously as a fine dining cuisine?

If you want to be taken seriously, you need to be in the playing field like the French cooking, Californian cuisine, Italian cooking. We’ve got to start thinking in their mind set. Putting it in nice stemware, making a nice roux. It’s not like your mother is cooking the curry, your sister is serving and your dad is doing the cash. Run the restaurant professionally and properly. As a customer, it doesn’t matter what comes on your plate – whether its French food or Indian food. As long as you’re getting the passion and love behind the chef and the owner. That’s how you get taken seriously.