DESILICIOUS!
TAKE-OUT HELPED KEEP (SOME OF) US SANE
Image credit: JAMIE BROWN on Unsplash.
By SUVARNA SHASTRI
I called my friend Kanta to tell her I love Gurvinder. She wanted to know which restaurant I met Gurvinder at.
She knows me well.
I love meeting and getting to know the people who own or work at the restaurants we visit.
There’s not been too much of that happening – the dining out and meeting – of late, due to all the restrictions in place and the social distancing to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.
And I miss it dearly.
Once in a while, we get take-out from the restaurants that are still open for take-out and thus it was that I called Gagan Sweets recently. I asked the lady who picked up the phone what was available that day and she rattled off a whole slew of dishes.
Kadhi, chana masala, dal makhni, kadhai paneer, matar paneer, alu gobhi, baingan bharta... all of them familiar to me from the restaurant’s all-vegetarian menu. But bhindi was MIA and I love their bhindi.
“Bhindi? What about bhindi?” I asked.
“No, sorry, not today, we had it yesterday,” said the lady. “We are not doing every item every day during this period,” she explained, by way of softening the blow.
“You don’t have bhindi?” I almost wailed.
What can I say? Like many others, I have been feeling sadly deprived of simple pleasures like dining out occasionally. And did I mention that I absolutely love the bhindi at Gagan Sweets?
I took a deep breath said, “Okay, could you please pack mid-sized containers of kadhi, alu-gobhi...”
But before I could finish placing my order, the lady chimed in. “When were you planning on coming in to pick up your order? If you give me half an hour, I’ll have bhindi ready for you.”
And so she did. When I got there, there she was, standing behind the counter with a huge grin that stretched beyond her mask.
“Yeh lo ji aapki bhindi (here’s your bhindi)!” she said, handing over a piping hot container.
Who does that? I felt almost as if I had magically acquired a sister who made something specially for me, something she knew I was craving.
She brushed off my ecstatic response, and got busy packing the rest of our order. Their famous samosas, a plate of chholey bhature, a container of kadhi. And a pound of freshly-made jalebis.
I asked how business was during the pandemic restrictions. It was very slow in the beginning, she said, but was picking up.
“We’re only doing take-out, but quite busy now,” she reported.
As we were leaving, I asked her what her name was.
“Gurvinder,” she said, with a big smile.
• Gagan Sweets is located at 3175 Rutherford Road, units 43, 44, in Vaughan, Ontario, and their phone number is 905-532-0126.