Vij's is an all-around sense satisfying experience

By Kyle Benning
[news editor]

5/5 forks

The best thing about Vij’s restaurant is the customer service.

Of course the restaurant doesn’t open until 5:30 p.m., and you have to be there half an hour early to ensure you can get a seat once the restaurant is open, but everyone is treated equally and you can’t book a reservation.

The staff is constantly walking around serving small appetizers, like pakoras, even if you didn’t order them.

Even Vikram Vij interacts with the customers and makes sure they are enjoying their meal at Vancouver’s most popular fine-dining restaurant, according to Urbanspoon.

Right when you step through the door, you see a very detailed front door in the middle of the restaurant. Vij said that the door was once the front door of a temple in India, and someone smuggled it to Canada.

The menu changes seasonally according to what ingredients are locally available.

The chickpeas in star anise and mutton kebobs make for good starters.

The kebob is cooked so that it is crispy on the outside, but is still tender in the middle. The kebob is covered in a Bengali-style curry which makes the flavour of the meat stand out.

The main dishes are a little on the expensive side, but are interesting fusions of tastes from all parts of India.

The roasted and mashed eggplant and butternut squash with black chickpea curry was the best dish. Even though the meat dishes were done very well, I thought the vegetarian ones had more flavour to them.

For those of you who prefer spice, I recommend eating the main dishes with the chilli peppers that accompany them. The main dishes weren’t as spicy as your average Indian cuisine.

For desert, the kheer (rice pudding with edible silver) was prepared well. It had the right amount of sugar in it and ended what was a very good meal.

The only thing you will have to worry about when at Vij’s is the bill. It is a little on the pricier side, but it is worth almost every penny.