A Spicy Obsession for Food
It’s fitting Chaska Indian Restaurant chef-owner Mohit Verma named his place with a word that means “obsession for food” in Hindi.
Verma says spices are the flavourful foundation of his cuisine. He closes every Monday to roast and grind them, restocking the kitchen’s large stainless-steel masala dabba, a spice box with containers including mahogany-coloured ground cumin and red- orange chile powder.
His modest North Indian restaurant on Cloverdale’s main street in Surrey has a lengthy menu, with Verma’s creative nods to Punjabi and Indo-Chinese street food and a few Canadian ingredients as well.
Without the new Surrey Spice Trail, I wouldn’t be enjoying Verma’s crispy fried Chaska Makki Chop, a mix of roasted corn, potato, pickled jalapeño, cheese and spices on a popsicle stick, deep-fried and served with spiced yogurt dipping sauce. His Gobhi Manchurian is a flavour bomb of fried cauliflower tossed in garlicky, spicy-sweet and vinegar-spiked Manchurian sauce.
If you want to find food treasure this good, you need a map.
Launched in summer 2021, the self-guided Surrey Spice Trail is a food lover’s matchmaker. Interactive maps link to more than 30 restaurants, cafés and a handful of multi-ethnic markets. Places range from simple family-run spots to contemporary dining rooms.
The Surrey Spice Trail is a gateway to tender Afghani dumplings and Nepalese momos, brothy Mexican birria tacos, Jamaican oxtail stew with dumpling spinners, Korean barbecue and more. The list leans towards North and South Indian restaurants, hardly surprising since Surrey is home to about 60 per cent of the total South Asian population in Metro Vancouver and nearly half the South Asian population in B.C.
With six town centres and more than 830 restaurants in Surrey, there’s a lot of ground to cover and plenty of culinary choice spread over this fast-growing, diverse municipality. The spice trail helps restaurants that started out catering to local communities looking for a taste of home expand their reach. It’s also a guiding hand for curious food lovers. The majority of the restaurants are in low-rise plazas, so the map is key, especially for people coming from Vancouver and beyond.
“It’s a win-win,” says Marvin Magana about having Guacamole Mexican Grill on the Surrey Spice Trail map. He and his wife, Rosa, opened their small eatery at the end of 2019.
“Surrey is becoming more tourism aware,” he says. “It’s not just a city of parks or plazas.”
Originally from El Salvador, the couple draws customers by word of mouth with their signature dishes, including premium tequila- spiked carnitas and birria tacos that take hours to make.
“Almost every customer mentions they feel not just the taste of the food but the love from us,” Rosa says.
Surrey has six town centres: Guildford, Fleetwood, Newton, Cloverdale, South Surrey and the municipality’s civic heart, Whalley, which was a good base for my eating exploration. I stayed at Civic Hotel, Autograph Collection, one of several Surrey hotels offering promotions tied to the Surrey Spice Trail with special packages.
For those who prefer a more structured eating experience, Chew on This Tasty Tours runs four-and-a-half-hour South Surrey Spice Trail small-group private tours.
Another tip: Grandview Corners plaza in South Surrey is a good place to start your Surrey Spice Trail adventure, with three restaurants in the same location: Afghan Kitchen, Curry Lounge Indian Restaurant and Woo Korean BBQ.
Every chef had a story and while they were unique, there were two words I heard over and over: spice and love. Spice is the key, they say, while love for the food makes it work even better.
Curry Lounge
His brothers were the good students, says Curry Lounge owner- master chef Jatin Sharma, so he joined the family business as a kitchen helper at a small roadside dhaba (café) serving travellers and truckers along the Delhi-Meerut Expressway to Uttar Pradesh.
When his dad became ill, Sharma took over as cook and found his calling.
After culinary school, he worked in a five-star hotel kitchen in Punjab and the upscale The Yellow Chilli chain run by celebrity chef Sanjeev Kapoor. He came to Canada in 2008, where Sharma worked at Curry Sensation in White Rock before opening Curry Lounge in 2019.
Curry Lounge serves traditional North Indian cuisine in a contemporary setting, with bronze-and-turquoise décor, a lengthy list of colourful cocktails and a patio for outdoor dining.
Sharma roasts and grinds all the spices used in the restaurant.
“I always concentrate on healthy food,” he says. “My main responsibility is not to be bland. Spicy also, but healthy.”
The proof is in his light version of butter chicken, made with milk instead of cream. “I use special spices, so you never feel full. People can digest the food.”
My favourite dishes here included aromatic Chicken Kali Mirch (black pepper chicken), Shabnam Ke Moti (stuffed mushrooms in yogurt and spices, cooked in one of two kitchen tandoors) and Aloo Nazakati (think Indian potato skins with these spiced paneer-stuffed potato shells).
Afghan Kitchen
Everybody says their mom makes the best food, but when Winnie Sun met her partner Hassib Sarwari in 2015, she knew he was speaking the truth.
“I’m Chinese and I never had rice like that,” says Sun, a self- confessed picky eater.
Afghan Kitchen rice is indeed special, a colourful pilaf with caramelized carrots, raisins, almonds and a pinch of brown sugar.
Born from Silk Road spice traders, Afghani food might not be well known yet, but if you love Indian, Chinese, Turkish and Middle Eastern cuisines, this is your place.
Sun and Kabul-born Sarwari wanted to open a business. When Sun tasted Zohra Sarwari’s food, she knew an Afghani restaurant was the best plan. Afghan Kitchen opened in late 2017. They’ve expanded to Vancouver with “elevated Afghan cuisine” at the new restaurant, Zarak.
They hope the Surrey Spice Trail will help encourage more people to try Afghani cuisine.
Take the standout dish, mantu. Lightly spiced minced beef and onion is steamed in paper-thin dumpling wrappers, topped with chana dal (split chickpeas) in a smooth vegetable-tomato sauce and topped with splats of rich yogurt.
Leave room for a slice of Mum’s Secret Cake. The menu promises: “She won’t tell us what’s in it, but we promise, it’s good cake.”
My Shanti
Vikram Vij is the most familiar name on the Surrey Spice Trail. The lauded Vancouver chef’s casual dining room My Shanti (my peace) pays homage to dishes from his travels through India. His indulgent fridge clear-out “favourite snack” was a favourite, too.
Opened in 2014, the restaurant is hard to miss, with a shimmering Bollywood-meets-disco exterior.
Each menu item name checks the city or region that made it famous. Typical of Vij, elegantly layered spice plays a key role.
Gol gappa shots, a fun-to-eat staple on most North India menus, are always a good start. The chaat was excellent, served in a wooden bowl to make it easy to mix shredded spinach, eggplant, sweet potatoes, crispy rice puffs and flavourful chutneys. A vegetarian thali tray was a lighter choice after a long day of eating our way along the Surrey Spice Trail.
As for Vikram’s Favourite Snack, the creamy-spicy cashew sauce is addictive. Smeared across a piece of naan and topped with slices of chewy roasted Portobello mushroom slices and masala-dusted paneer, it comes to the table bubbling and fragrant from the broiler.
Kerala Kitchen
Kerala Kitchen chef-owner Sujith Rajasekharan, 34, specializes in food from his South India coastal homeland. This cuisine is lighter than what’s typically made in the north, focusing on coconut milk and coconut oil instead of dairy. Spices are key. Spice-infused fish curry and gigantic, crispy, crèpe-like dosas are staples.
To make the 19 different dosas on the menu, Rajasekharan soaks lentils for eight hours, then grinds them and mixes them with rice flour to make a thin fermented batter that’s quick-cooked on the stove’s flat-top. He makes the paratha flatbread dough daily. Unlike many Indian restaurants where it’s premade, it’s cooked to order and arrives flakey and hot.
“We grind our own spice. Everything. I like to be more authentic,” says Rajasekharan, who trained in India and worked as a chef for Fairmont Hotels in Vancouver and Jasper Park Lodge.
When he opened his Surrey restaurant, he initially had a more traditional North Indian menu. But Rajasekharan wanted to showcase Kerala cuisine and spent a couple of years perfecting his recipes. Fluffy puttu — steamed ground rice and coconut — and comforting kappa, a thick, savoury tapioca and coconut porridge flavoured with onion, chilies, curry leaves and spices, initially drew South Indian diners. But word of mouth has brought a wide range of customers.
His homemade coconut and tomato chutneys are divine. The signature Kerala dish is meaty kingfish cooked in a banana leaf with thick spicy pollichathu sauce made from curry leaves and a hit of sour Malabar tamarind.
What’s the secret to making authentic South Indian cuisine?
“Just a basic, simple recipe and nice seasoning,” Rajasekharan says. “You just need to put a little bit of love.”
Chacha’s Tandoor & Grill
Armed with a Bachelor of Commerce, not a culinary degree, 24-year- old Harchet Kalra is part of a new generation of restaurateurs on the Surrey Spice Trail.
The restaurant’s name means “uncle” in Punjabi, honouring his dad’s brother, a self-taught chef who handles the culinary side of the business
Chacha’s has a compact menu and bright, modern décor. There’s a Chacha’s brand beer on tap. Kalra is going after a younger crowd who wants elevated fast-food meals based on Northern Indian street eats. The menu is fun. Gol Gappay shots arrive on the table in a mini yellow wagon. For kathi rolls, hunks of tender tandoori chicken are covered in spiced yogurt sauce and wrapped in paper-thin rumali handkerchief bread, with fries on the side.
Kalra is also looking to franchise the business, which opened in 2020.
“I’m not a good cook, no. I like eating food. My uncle makes the good food, I eat the good food. And then that all kind of works,” says Kalra, who designed the restaurant’s distinctive beard-and-turban logo.
Food is made to order. “When you walk in, we make it fresh,” he says. The Surrey Spice Trail will bring awareness to the city’s wide variety of restaurants, Kalra says.
“I think definitely it exposes people to all sorts of different foods. Even within India, people don’t realize there are different types of cuisines. I think this is the chance to work on all those different recipes and places, and I think it’s just awesome.”
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