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From one stop light at 93A Avenue to the next at 96 Avenue, tastes of varying cultures can be had on both sides of Scott Road, in North Delta on one and Surrey on the other
Exploring the restaurants that bring Metro Vancouver neighbourhoods to life.
A group of teens crowd around Surrey’s Taste of Lahore restaurant during their lunch break from school to get their hands on a $5 meal.
Ghazala Mustafa, the restaurant’s co-owner, rings up the bill for the L.A. Matheson Secondary students. While technically a mother of three, Mustafa’s motherly instincts extend to far more children than just her own.
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“I don’t like them to be wandering around because there’s so many bad things going on in Surrey, or be in bad company, so even if they just have free time, I tell them to come here and sit down. We know they’re safe,” Mustafa said, as she rings up two boys from the nearby high school, ordering one meal to share.
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The lunch hour is usually quiet for the restaurant, but on school days, this time almost entirely belongs to high school students.
“It’s a big enough portion and it’s halal and cheap,” Mustafa said, showcasing a bowl of white rice with butter chicken filling the top. “A lot of these kids are from Muslim countries so their parents don’t want them to just eat anywhere that’s not halal, so this works for them and they can share one plate.”
The restaurant’s 120 Street location in the busy Scott Town Plaza opened in 2019. Soon, it became a fixture for the community.
Mustafa and her husband Ghulam drew from personal experiences from growing up in South Asia to bring a little bit of Lahore, the second largest city in Pakistan, into a corner of Surrey.
Inside Taste of Lahore, there is more than meets the eye, with a large ballroom hidden away in the back where wedding events and large-scale brunches are hosted.
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“For Muslims, we don’t have a lot of halls that are liquor-free and only serve halal, so we started doing that,” Mustafa said.
Taste of Lahore shares Scott Road with dozens of eateries. From one stop light at 93A Avenue to the next at 96 Avenue, tastes of varying cultures can be had on both sides of the road, in North Delta on one and Surrey on the other.
Unsurprisingly for the area, Indian restaurants make up the majority. But a Surrey food blogger and frequenter of the area says to not let the overall picture cast such a narrow view of the space.
“When you get into the nuance of it, and you try the different restaurants, you start to realize that there is a difference,” said Raj Thandhi, a chef and food writer.
“One very large culture gets put into one bucket but if you look at India, it has so many subcultures. You can try Punjabi food, Gujarati food, Tamil food and so much more.”
What Thandhi describes can be seen in the small corridor, with Indian street foods available, as well as traditional, vegetarian spots, cultural dessert locations and both North and South Indian spots.
Fusion food is also popular. The newly opened second location of Dragon Wok, a restaurant offering Chinese cuisine with Indian flavours, represents the backgrounds of owners and brother-in-laws Eddie Chang and Richard Hsieh.
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“We are Chinese and from India and actually, I am a third-generation Chinese in India so we blend the Indian spices into the Chinese cooking techniques and dishes,” Chang explained.
Chang, from Kolkata in India’s West Bengal state, said the food served at Dragon Wok comes from how he learned to cook growing up. Now, the family brought it to Canada and specifically, to two Surrey locations.
“It’s a small, family-oriented restaurant,” he added. “I don’t think many people know about Chinese Indians but there are quite a few of us here.”
Other cultures are sprinkled into the small section of Scott Road. Taste of Lahore is not the only Pakistani restaurant in the area, with Zaiqa, meaning flavour in Urdu, standing just one plaza over. A Vietnamese restaurant, Super Pho, is also in Scott Town Plaza, along with the small James Bakery offering Afghan bread and a large Afghan restaurant Pamir Diner across the street.
The mix of shiny new signs and longtime staples reflects the changing landscape of Surrey and of Scott Road itself, which is undergoing development on both sides of the street and in both municipalities it straddles.
“This area particularly has always had that variety of mom-and-pop small businesses, family-run businesses. It is a sort of community hub,” Thandhi said. “A lot of students and people come from all over to that area to try the food.”
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With the R6 Scott Road rapid bus running consistently along the street, she finds the area can also attract people from all over.
The turnover of some businesses is a difficult sight, Thandhi said, mainly pointing to rising rental costs, fewer people dining out, and at times, “excited, food-loving people who have put their passion before their strategy.”
When Thandhi was growing up in Newton, there were only a handful of South Asian businesses for her family to try. Options have exploded in the last seven years, she says, and it’s not appearing to slow down.
Some essential stores and businesses also have a presence in the area, with cultural grocery stores, a post office, South Asian fabric and clothing stores, a bank, a thrift store and more to complete the space and make it more of a communal hub.
“It keeps people close to their cultural roots, from the people cooking and preserving family recipes to the consumers coming there for a feel of nostalgia and then there’s also adventurous foodies who can just have fun and explore the food,” Thandhi said.
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Location: 120 Street between 93A Avenue and 96 Avenue
Number of restaurants and food options: 24
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What are the options for parking?
The business plazas all have free parking for customers.
What are Metro Vancouver Eat Streets?
This article is part one of a series highlighting Metro Vancouver’s must-visit Eat Streets. With the goal of celebrating — and maybe even introducing you to — stretches of community around the region that have a notable concentration of local food businesses. Know of a great Eat Street in your community? Let us know where. Email us at artslife@vancouversun.com. Bookmark THIS PAGE to read the latest instalment every Wednesday.
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Source: vancouversun.com
