Lila takes over the vegetarian Arbor space on Main Street

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Lila

Where: 3941 Main St., Vancouver

When: Dinner, daily. Lunch, Saturday and Sunday.

Info: 604-620-3256 lilarestaurant.ca

Respect. I gladly dole it out to the women behind Lila, a newly opened almost-vegetarian restaurant. They’ve long impacted Vancouver gastronomy, but Shira Blustein and Meeru Dhalwala aren’t attention seekers and they both hold strongly held principles like sustainable feeding, community building, and female strength and empowerment.

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Blustein embodied that even as a 14-year-old in a punk rock band, screaming out teenage angst. “Once a punk rocker, always a punk rocker,” says adult Blustein. “The funniest part is, punk was considered such a rebellious act but today, I’d be excited if my kids became punk rockers. There are so many worse things they could get into. We were protesting for equal rights, human rights, feminism and all that.”

These days, she’s better known for her vegetarian restaurants, the ground-breaking Acorn and the late, more casual Arbor. The latter rebranded into the subject at hand — the almost-vegetarian Lila restaurant. Blustein cites similarities between being a punk artist and restaurant operator. “We had connection. We were about community and communication. Playing in a band requires every member doing their part to create a song and a singular experience. It’s a most beautiful thing when you perform,” she says.

And she’s still performing musically but more calmly and not screaming her lungs out. She plays keyboards and does backup vocals for bands such as Cure cover band Strawberries and Cream, and indie folk artist Ashley Shadow.

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When the lease for Arbor restaurant came up for renewal earlier this year, she had the opportunity to partner with friend and chef Dhalwala who was, until recently, the backbone of Vij’s restaurant, which is still owned and operated by her ex-husband and business partner, Vikram Vij.

Dhalwala, who received Restaurant Canada’s Culinary Award of Excellence earlier this year, read it as a sign for her third chapter. “I was in economic and international development until my 30s and then from my 30s to 60, which I’m hitting in October, I was cooking at Vij’s, married, bringing up children. As I hit 60, I feel free but I want to leave something in this industry,” she says. (She remarried earlier this year.)

For one, she’s mentoring. Most recently, she hired two young Ukrainian women who hadn’t learned English yet and had no culinary training but had “the right energy.” In the kitchen, she let go of the stress of running a higher-end Indian kitchen like at Vij’s. “I want to relax and cook as if mom’s cooking. I want to be playful, relax, experiment and teach a whole new generation.” The name of the restaurant, Lila, in Sanskrit, means playful and divine drama.

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Lila feels relaxed and cosy and boasts one of the best patios on Main Street, with greenery and Aubrey Beardsley print images painted on the walls. Inside, it’s folksy, with more plants and a glass garage style door that can open up to a streetside patio.

The menu features mostly plants but welcomes some sea life for “carnivores who want to have a rich, hearty meal,” as well as dairy, such as paneer. But really, there’s just two seafood dishes on the menu currently. Pacific prawns in a green onion, tomato and ginger curry on rice pilaf ($19) features pristine prawns and a curry sauce that makes way for the delicate flavours.  Marinated, seared Arctic char on creamy basmati risotto ($34) is hearty and generous. “I get all my seafood from Organic Ocean, a fishmonger I trust completely,” Dhalwala says. Using local, organic, “beautifully sourced” foods is challenging when she’s keeping price points friendly. “I’m getting my master’s degree but it’s going to work because it’s a small, tight menu and I don’t have a lot of inventory,” she says. The prawn dish, along with the arctic char and portobello mushroom and paneer in creamy onion curry, are the top sellers.

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“For me, sustainability requires research and I look for the bigger picture about how the food is grown and produced, how it works for the body,” she says. Her longtime go-to local farm is Hazelmere Organic Farm in Surrey.

The dishes I tried were homey and mildly spiced with occasional stabs of heat. “I have six burners, that’s it,” she says, of cooking limitations. Dhalwala opts for mild sauces that highlight the ingredients. “For me, it’s important you can taste the actual ingredients,” she says.

Kale and paneer samosa with coconut curry ($12) featured cubes of paneer mixed with the chopped kale. It’s a tweak on the mushroom, bell pepper and paneer samosa she served at Rangoli, the other Indian restaurant — more casual than Vij’s — that she ran until the pandemic hit. Typically, samosas have a potato filling but kale and paneer makes for a less starchy dish.

The potato and cauliflower pakoras ($15) are crisp with a satisfying crunch as you bite into the black chickpea batter. There’s a tickle of heat. The accompanying fresh mango and mint chutney could be more assertively minty to lift the mild cauliflower and potatoes.

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The bhaji is named Lila’s bhaji (($28) because it strays from the classic Mumbai street food of mashed vegetables with pav (pronounced pao), or soft dinner buns. “It’s my version,” Dhalwala says of the dish of chopped vegetable curry with some buttery paranta (made with chapati dough, rolled up with flecks of ghee, then flattened and grilled).

Don’t miss the Arctic char ($34) atop a creamy basmati risotto — the risotto is made with Indian basmati rice, not Italian arborio. “People come to eat Indian food,” she says. For the cooking broth, she combines coconut curry, tomato ginger curry, and fenugreek cream sauces she uses in other dishes — a time saver, skirting the “only six burners” issue. The char is marinated in a spice mix and cooked perfectly. It was such a generous portion, dessert was out of the question — a choice of gulab jamun in a light cream cardamom ras or mango custard pudding.

Wines served follow sustainable, low intervention models chosen from biodynamic and organic farming producers. A short, all-B.C. wine list is compatible with Indian food: sparklers, rosés, aromatic whites and fresh, light reds with light tannins. The house cocktails are twists on classics — mojitos, margaritas and old-fashioneds — but with South Asian spice accents such as tamarind, cloves and panch puran spice blend.

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