Toronto's curry king has opened a new midtown family restaurant that's built for kids—you can even draw on the walls with chalk.
Although many restaurants have popped up in recent years emphasizing a casual atmosphere that welcomes families, it’s hard to remember a place that explicitly had a children’s menu.
“It’s something a lot of chefs—and I’m guilty of this as well—have ignored,” admits Hemant Bhagwani, better known as the man behind the Amaya Indian restaurants and fast food outlets. “There’s the feeling that you don’t make as much money when you’re focusing on kids even though you’re putting as much work into a dish, but I’m loving it right now.”
It’s been a week since the opening of his latest venture, Bazaar Global Food Bar (692 Mount Pleasant Road at Soudan St.), Bhagwani’s 200-seat family restaurant with a menu that mixes and matches international cuisines like Vietnamese, Mexican, Korean, American, Italian, Chinese, Middle Eastern and of course, Indian.
“I’m classically trained in French cuisine but I always wanted to do something more casual and fun in a neighbourhood,” he says. “Indian is still not considered as a comfort food so I wanted to see if I could play with pizza or do bulgogi tacos. There are so many ethnic restaurants out there and I’m trying to bring it all into one room.”
Think of a barbecue duck pita with habanero sauce ($14) and boneless buttermilk fried chicken strips with a sweet honey-peppercorn sauce ($10). The “not so Neapolitan pizzas” sound gimmicky on the menu, but after trying the incredibly tasty tangy butter chicken pizza with sweet peppers ($15), it’s clear Bhagwani’s not aiming for the novelty resto angle. (He adds that they pull their own fior di latte for the pizzas to ensure quality control).
The kids’ menu ($7-$8) is a little less adventurous (they are finicky types, after all) with staples like chicken fingers and spaghetti. But should the tykes want to get into the fusion action, there is a butter chicken burger and milkshakes ($5) with flavours like toasted marshmallow, vanilla-coconut and a mango-vanilla lassi.
In four months, Bhagwani transformed what was previously the high-end dim sum restaurant Lai Toh Heen into a space that matches the eclectic menu. It looks similar to a children’s wing of a science museum or Uncle Moe’s Family Feedbag. On the ceiling are multicoloured panels depicting instructional dance steps; food-related quotes painted on the wood paneling in the rear dining room; a neon psychic reader sign in one corner reserved for a fortune teller that comes in on weekends; crafts and paintings available for purchase. Upstairs there’s a room in which the walls are chalkboards, which on that day were still covered in scribbles from a recent child’s birthday party. (Bhagwani says that about a third of the diners that come through the doors are kids).
“I originally saw this as more of a place to hang out, but what this neighbourhood really needed was a family restaurant,” he says. “There are a lot of young families here and they need a place to take the kids. Not everyone can afford a babysitter or plan ahead to have someone to look after them.”
The chef and restaurateur had another shift in his restaurant vision after a recent family crisis.
“I lost a very close cousin in India a few months ago and I always felt it was because of the lack of educational opportunities,” he says. “My sisters and I had an amazing education but I felt there were other family members that didn’t have that. He committed suicide because he lost his business and couldn’t go further because he didn’t have the education background. He left two kids.
“We need to do something about educating kids in India. There’s still a mentality that if we educate our kids, the parents aren’t going to have someone to drive them around or take care of them. That needs to change. The disparity between the rich and the poor is growing and I want to help stop that.”
And so Bhagwani became a supporter of the Being Human foundation, a celebrity-driven charity that funds healthcare and education for India’s underprivileged. The restaurant sells t-shirts with proceeds going to the cause as well as a veggie burger ($10) with $2 from each dish going to the charity.
“I had an amazing ride here and I want to help the economy around me and have a business with some social responsibility. Why not start involving schools in the area and host fundraisers? We now have the space to do it.”
Bazaar Global Food Bar, 692 Mount Pleasant Road. #MID 647-748-9100.
