It barely gets any hype because of its quiet social media presence and lacklustre ambience.

The joint is simple and plain and doesn’t use exotic Indian imagery to sell the motherland’s cuisine. Its dull red and grey themed decor sucks and features silly white polka dots sadder than Dusty Rhodes when Sapphire abandoned him for diamonds and a duffle bag full of money.

The restaurant also has an odd smell. My large C.D. Bales nose hypothesizes it’s a mixture of body odour, incense, cologne, and urine.

I can confirm the urine hypothesis because the last time I dined at Tandoori Kitchen, there was a pool of deep-orange, Vitamin B12 deficient piss left unflushed in the toilet. The small restaurant’s washroom door was wide open, letting the urine penetrate my surroundings and taint my lunch with its stench.

Besides the food, the only Indian thing about Tandoori Kitchen is the shitty contemporary Bollywood music videos playing on the flat screen in the corner.

Although Tandoori Kitchen’s interior designer should watch a Kamal Amrohi film for inspiration, the food is usually fantastic and authentic. I’ve tried their Tandoori Chicken, Aloo Kulcha, and multiple meat curries and enjoyed them all.

Sadly, I can’t say the same thing about their sweets.

Tandoori Kitchen’s chef must’ve skipped the course on Indian sweets in culinary school because he makes dreadful Gulab Jamun, Halwa and Barfi - the stuff tastes old and awful, and it’s all harder than Hrithik Roshan’s abs.

The Butter Chicken is a winner, though.

The enormous dish has enough food to last me the entire day. I once spent just five minutes with the Butter Chicken, pairing it with generic naan (garlic naan and other varieties aren’t an option at Tandoori Kitchen), and ate nearly two pounds of food in that short time. Sixty percent of the dish still remained.

Unfortunately, the Scoville rating on the Butter Chicken is minimal, which is likely the result of the chef not using enough chilli peppers or powder in his marinade and gravy, reducing the flavours of what Butter Chicken can and should be and making the dish more of a Caucasian pleaser—most Indians prefer hotter food that leaves their assholes burning. Still, the chicken and gravy are flavourful, and the gravy’s sweetness isn’t overwhelming like a fake auntie.

There are moments when the gravy becomes too tomatoey; however, this undesirable taste is suppressed by the infinite amount of boneless chicken pieces, guaranteeing masala-rich meat in every naan scoop.

If Tandoori Kitchen glammed up its interior, got louder on social media, and tweaked its dessert game, it would be a far more revered restaurant. The little-known, south-side gem is usually reliable for high-quality entrees, including a good, mildly spiced Butter Chicken you can enjoy without any fear of next-day asshole damage.

I love their name. I’ve always had an affinity for alliteration: Bruce Banner, Fanny Felcher, Dirk Diggler, Linda Lovelace, and Nadia Nyce.

I also have an affinity for the surname Khan because I grew up during the heyday of Bollywood’s Khan triumvirate: Aamir, Salman, and Shah Rukh.

Unfortunately, my love for alliteration and the Khan trinity doesn’t do anything for Khan Kebabs.

I ate there twice when they first opened about five years ago. I remember them serving mid-tier Pakistani food in an environment that had nothing to do with Pakistan.

They had SpongeBob-yellow walls with photographs of Europe, exotic and colourful fish on their TV screen, and the worst elevator music.

After my second dining experience at the restaurant, I criticized them, stating they had a lot of potential; however, they needed to do something about their decor and music to celebrate their Pakistani identity.

Five years later, Khan Kebabs underwent a Babu Bhatt transformation, becoming a full-blown Pakistani restaurant.

The booth seats are now Pakistani flag green. There are large blurry portraits of life in the motherland, and there’s desi-style music, albeit with some buffoons using classical ragas only to sing in heavily-accented English.

As mentioned above, I remember Khan Kebabs for serving mid-tier Pakistani food. Sadly, their Butter Chicken is bottom-tier, and it’s paired with unbuttered naan that’s harder than a sexually repressed teenager in Karachi.

It took about five minutes for the restaurant to prepare my dish, which was insulting and made me question Khan Kebabs’ moral fibre and respect for their customers. I didn’t go there for some damn low-quality fast food. Butter Chicken should never take just five minutes to make—a meticulous and lengthy marination process is required.

I’m confident Khan Kebabs doesn’t even marinate their chicken—a pathetic five tiny pieces of meat—before cooking it for a few minutes and dumping it in the ugliest and grossest gravy, which probably sits there in the kitchen all day, collecting the staff’s spit, sweat, and farts.

The gravy is almost on par with Campbell’s gross tomato soup, reminding me of sick days in the 90s, when I’d be home from elementary school, couch-ridden, warm in my kambal, eating soup, and watching The Price Is Right, praying for Bob Barker to announce a trip to Hawaii during the Showcase Showdown so I could see the bikini-clad models and get off.

I still remember those raging hormones vividly and fondly. They made the tomato soup tolerable.

Sadly, Khan Kebabs isn’t capable of giving me even the slightest tingle.

The restaurant might be competent in making Pakistani BBQ, explaining their near-perfect Skip the Dishes score and five-year reign in the Duggan neighbourhood. Still, they should remove Butter Chicken from their menu. They don’t know how to make it.

Butter Chicken is a post-independence Indian creation popularized by Punjabis in Delhi—it’s not even a Pakistani dish. I’m not trying to tell Khan Kebabs they’re not allowed to make post-independence Indian dishes; however, their Butter Chicken is embarrassing and won’t help ease any of the tension between Pakistan and India.

And speaking of Pakistan and India’s never-ending tension, which often involves Kashmir, I’m surprised Khan Kebabs doesn’t use Kashmiri mirch to marinate their chicken. A little Kashmiri mirch would go the extra mile and add much-needed flavour and character to their dry, tasteless, impossible-to-chew, and rubbery poultry. But like I said, Khan Kebabs doesn’t know how to make Butter Chicken. They don’t even use fenugreek leaves or anything else to garnish their gravy, leaving it all lonely, sad-looking, and Garfield-coloured.

Although I was excited to try their food, I only devoured Triple-Jamesons that night and did a lot of Bhangra.

I rarely eat food at Indian wedding receptions because I like to feel light on the dance floor and don’t want kebabs, samosas, and pakoras weighing me down and jiggling in my belly.

Since the reception, I’ve wanted to try Monsoon and finally got my chance on Saturday.

It’s a posh and bougie joint, exuding a class uncommon to most Indian and Pakistani restaurants on the south side of town.

There’s plant life; a giant, black bookshelf with non-fiction titles on Pierre Trudeau and the caste system; a gorgeous and sleek bar; and blurry black & white portraits of Raj Kapoor and Nargis singing in the rain, complementing the restaurant’s monsoon theme.

The soundtrack consists of Hindi film songs from the mid-90s to contemporary times, showcasing the decline in Bollywood’s artistry over the years. Gems like “Jhanjariya” from KRISHNA and “Kehna Hi Kya” from BOMBAY are juxtaposed with lewd garbage like “Zara Zara Touch Me” from RACE.

There’s no Punjabi music on Monsoon’s playlist, which I find saddening and troublesome because the restaurant is Punjabi-owned, and Punjabi music is currently light years ahead of Bollywood music. Even last year’s best Bollywood song, “Arjun Vailly,” from the ANIMAL soundtrack, is a Punjabi folk song.

Playlist aside, Monsoon is a solid restaurant. The food is good, the owner is friendly and likeable, and our Jordan Sandhu lookalike server was a sweetheart.

Monsoon’s Smoked Butter Chicken is a unique dish.

The chef doesn’t submerge the five pudgy chicken pieces in a gravy, Jack Dawson style. Most of the chicken sits atop like Rose, proudly on display, showing that Monsoon lovingly marinates their meat with the standard Indian spices. I prefer this method over dumping unseasoned chicken in a gravy and depending on the latter for all the flavour.

Unfortunately, Monsoon’s decision not to drown their chicken in the gravy makes it a bit dry. Gravy submersion is often necessary to tenderize the meat, resulting in easier-to-chew chicken. Still, this is just a quibble because the tandoor-smoked chicken tastes great.

The spice level is minimal at first, but it crawls up on you, gently choking you like a little consensual S&M with a dominatrix (my safe words are “Udi Baba”).

I recommend eating the dish as fast as possible because the gravy eventually becomes porridge-like, with extreme viscosity, making it thicker than Aamir Khan in DANGAL and almost inedible. It’s also very tomatoey and sweet and relies on the chicken to balance things out with its smoky flavour.

Speaking of viscosity, Monsoon’s Rabri Falooda Milkshake lacks the milkshake-thickness I’m used to. However, it makes up for it by relying on uncommon milkshake ingredients like semiya, pistachios, and cardamom, resulting in an unconventional and refreshing Indian-style beverage.

And it would be remiss of me if I didn’t mention the Dill Naan - a new discovery in my household.

As a lifelong fan of dill-flavoured chips and dips, Dill Naan is a dream come true, and it pairs beautifully with the Butter Chicken, creating a truly memorable, aromatic tag team.

Although the most common theory is that the dish was a serendipitous discovery at Delhi’s Moti Mahal restaurant post-independence, there’s another theory, detailed in the article, that suggests Kundan Lal Gujral, one of Moti Mahal’s chefs, actually created the dish in Peshawar, which is now a part of Pakistan, in the 1930s.

If this is true, Butter Chicken is an Indian and Pakistani dish because up until 1947, they were the same country.

That means Khan Kebabs truly sucks and has no excuse for their horrible Butter Chicken.

On the other hand, Chutney is a fantastic Pakistani restaurant and makes some of the best Butter Chicken in Edmonton.

It’s near-perfect and shines brighter than Zoheb Hassan in 1982. It hits you fast and hard with the most furious inferno of flavour, leaving little room for the gross saccharine often found in Butter Chicken.

I thought I was eating a hot chicken curry, but the classic Butter Chicken colours, complete with methi and a pearl necklace cream swirl, told me something else, and I could taste a little sweetness.

The spice blend - likely featuring crushed chillies from hell - pounds the sweetness into a tertiary role, challenging my heat tolerance by combusting on my tongue and lips and making my nose runnier than Salim Sinai’s. I was lucky to have a large glass of ice-cold orange Fanta in front of me to minimize the burn to an enjoyable, masochistic level.

I scooped the tender chicken with buttered Garlic Naan, hot and fresh from the tandoor. Sadly, it wasn’t garlicky enough for me, which is disappointing because I need enough garlic in my system to destroy desi Dracula from the horror movie ZINDA LAASH.

Chutney’s Butter Chicken is exceptional, as is the friendly, polite, and attentive customer service.

The decor is a love letter to Pakistan’s pop culture and iconography. There’s a food cart to mimic the streets of Lahore, a kaleidoscopic mural, majlis furniture, and a wall of fame celebrating Pakistani music with crooked portraits of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Abida Parveen, and Noor Jehan.

It’s hard for me to hate any restaurant with a portrait of Noor Jehan. She is to Pakistan’s Punjab what Surinder Kaur is to India’s Punjab, and her influence remains strong on today’s music - Sidhu Moosewala’s “Love Sick” owes its life to Noor Jehan’s “Jadon Holi Jai.”

Chutney’s soundtrack is mostly Pakistani music, which is refreshing because - excluding the recent ANIMAL soundtrack - modern-day Bollywood music sucks, and I have a soft spot for Pakistan’s music.

Sometimes, I prefer Pakistan’s music over India’s, especially when it comes to Coke Studio. I find the former more soulful, soothing, and Punjabi.

I also prefer Pakistani restaurants over Indian ones because they never have any hangups about the carnivore lifestyle - as long as the abattoir slaughters animals halal-style - so restaurants like Chutney are meat-focused, catering to carnivorous spice fiends like me.

The restaurant is next door to the legendary Spice Centre, my family’s source for Bollywood movies and Bhangra albums in the early-to-mid 90s. I grew up at this store, and it fills me with beautiful memories of childhood innocence and wonder, so it would crush my heart if a second-rate restaurant like Khan Kebabs were next door, stinking up the area.

Mercifully, that’s not the case. Chutney is excellent and deserves its spot next to the beloved Spice Centre, and I’m hopeful it stays there for a long time and eventually reaches legendary status, too.

He said he opened the restaurant in September, and it’s been struggling ever since. He then asked that I “personally guide” his business to success.

A restaurateur has never requested this sort of thing from me, so I became confused and paranoid.

I was confused because I’m not a restaurant consultant, so how could I lead one to success?

I was paranoid because this request seemed bizarre, and I’ve been dealing with some weirdness behind the scenes recently.

Ever since my Khan Kebabs review, I’ve received some sexually explicit private messages replete with homophobia, misogyny, racism, and sociopathy.

As a result, I’m not in the mood to meet strangers I’ve spoken to on the internet - they might be Khan’s cronies, and I’m familiar with the Mark Twitchell story.

Still, I’m more than willing to help out a struggling restaurant - if it doesn’t suck - so I went to the Butter Chicken Eatery yesterday, and unfortunately, I have nothing positive to say.

Although I love championing underdogs, the Butter Chicken Eatery truly sucks and doesn’t deserve my support.

Their soundtrack is whiter than the Irish WWE wrestler Sheamus and consists of stupid covers of songs like No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak.” I was at the restaurant for 15 to 20 minutes and didn’t hear a single Indian song - even though they serve Indian food.

There’s no desi imagery on the walls. I saw a long and anachronistic mural glorifying the Parisian life; however, there’s nothing Indian about the joint’s decor, reminding me of the disease that is Remedy Cafe - a restaurant that’s as ethnic as an episode of Home Improvement.

And the food at the Butter Chicken Eatery is horrible.

The Garlic Naan isn’t garlicky enough and is skinnier than Mahatma Gandhi. It also refuses to last the entirety of the Butter Chicken experience, fouling out in the fourth quarter and forcing me to eat the remaining shitty chicken by itself.

When the Kundan Lals first created Butter Chicken in India, it consisted of leftover Tandoori Chicken dumped inside a spicy tomato and butter gravy to prevent the meat from drying out.

I’m assuming the Butter Chicken Eatery doesn’t know this fact because they rely on unseasoned, charred, and xerodermic chicken pieces and suffocate them in the blandest of gravies, trying to capture a pathetic fraction of flavour but failing miserably.

If you name your restaurant the Butter Chicken Eatery, I expect your Butter Chicken to be excellent. It should be your flagship dish and magnum opus. That’s what logic suggests, but I think this joint lacks logic because they’ve created garbage that isn’t worth anyone’s time.

Like I said earlier, I can’t champion a restaurant that sucks.

I’ve given them some advice, though.

I told them their Butter Chicken needs to be a thousand times better if they want to keep their name.

I encouraged the owner to take his chef to the Pakistani restaurant Chutney to try their far superior Butter Chicken for inspiration.

I also encouraged the owner, a fellow Punjabi, to celebrate the desi identity with modern Punjabi music - I provided him with a Spotify playlist of 2023’s best Bhangra songs to liven up his spot.

And I recommended some unique, memorable, motherland-inspired decor that tells customers they’re in an Indian restaurant - even the white-owned Taco Delhi on Gateway Boulevard has the common sense to do this to sell their product.

I emphasized the word “uniqueness” to the Butter Chicken Eatery’s owner because there’s nothing unique and special about his place. It’s currently an expendable addition to our local Indian and Pakistani food scene, and it desperately needs to reinvent itself from top to bottom to survive the cutthroat restaurant business.

I watched ANIMAL a few weeks ago and didn’t like it. Still, I can’t stop thinking about it and its themes of child neglect, toxic masculinity, misogyny, and revenge.

I believe the movie’s director, Sandeep Reddy Vanga, is simultaneously the most exciting and reviled filmmaker in India today.

His films are highly entertaining and deeply offensive. They also produce the most despicable male protagonists and the best soundtracks.

The ANIMAL soundtrack, full of Punjabi machismo and bravado, has been on repeat in my household for several weeks.

As a result, Choice of India’s musical selection for their recent video won me over immediately and convinced me to make them the next stop on my Butter Chicken Odyssey.

Sadly, I didn’t hear anything from ANIMAL at the restaurant. However, I did hear a lot of Punjabi music, which is always lovely.

The friendly, newly married restaurant hostess, still sporting her bright-red bridal chura, played Arjan Dhillon’s 2021 album AWARA in its entirety twice.

I would’ve liked some variety because I’m not a member of the Arjan Dhillon fan club - I find him derivative and dull. However, Dhillon is better than the elevator music I had at my last Butter Chicken stop at the Butter Chicken Eatery.

Choice of India is a small and cozy joint in the Ellerslie area, featuring floral wallpaper, an impressive, cascading chandelier, vinyl plank flooring, a bad paint job, and tiny, out-of-place, 3D portraits of waterfalls, boats, and fish. There’s also a blurry, blown-up canvas reprint of a painting depicting the village life in Punjab.

The restaurant seats about thirty people on the main floor, and up the stairs is another dining area for claustrophobic private parties of up to twenty people, dimly lit by old Christmas lights on a wooden pergola. It’s nothing fancy and memorable like O-Ren Ishii’s private dining area at the House of Blue Leaves.

There’s also a religious shrine devoted to Hindu gods and goddesses on the main level, which explains why beef and alcohol aren’t on the menu, making the second floor utterly useless in my mind - I don’t want to attend any party where alcohol isn’t available.

I ordered the bone-in Butter Chicken with Garlic Naan and a Sprite.

I appreciate that bone-in Butter Chicken is an option at Choice of India. It mimics the original Butter Chicken at Delhi’s Moti Mahal restaurant, which consisted of well-seasoned Tandoori Chicken tenderized and enriched by a spicy tomato and butter gravy.

Choice of India’s chicken - two leg pieces and two thighs - is exquisite and lovingly flavoured, eliciting a Pavlovian response on par with a drooling Homer Simpson.

My only complaint is that the chicken has minimal spice because the restaurant doesn’t use enough mirch when marinating it.

The gravy is moderately hot but fails to transfer heat to the chicken. It’s incapable of penetrating the bone-in chicken’s nooks and crannies.

The gravy’s spice only hit me when I started eating it by itself, like a bowl of soup. It didn’t have a lot of heat, but I wish it could’ve relayed at least a modicum to the chicken because it would’ve made it so much better and elevated it from good to great.

Regardless, Choice of India remains a high-quality and reliable restaurant worthy of its acclaim and popularity in Ellerslie. I also respect that it attempts to serve the original vision of Butter Chicken popularized almost eighty years ago at Moti Mahal.

Initially, I was reluctant to go there - I’ve never heard of the place, and it’s on nobody’s radar - but it’s in my old stomping grounds of Sakaw in the same place that once housed the legendary Millhurst Pizza - a restaurant that meant a lot to me in my younger years.

The first time I ever smoked weed was in the woods behind Millhurst Pizza back in 2001. After getting high, my friend and I conquered our munchies with the all-you-can-eat buffet at Millhurst, devouring Hawaiian slices, lasagna, and perogies while experiencing some marijuana-caused paranoia.

The whole strip mall with Millhurst Pizza holds a lot of nostalgia for me. On the opposite end of the former pizzeria used to be Five Star Movies, a mom-and-pop video store with a haunted house for the horror section - I’m talking an actual house, with creaky floors, gloomy lighting, the darkest walls, and fake spiderwebs. I still remember renting GHOULIES from there in 1995.

Although this area used to be a hip place for the loitering youth of the 90s, it’s now a forgotten and unsafe dystopia - there was a shooting in the parking lot just this past Monday.

Still, I’m a Mill Woods boy - I came of age during the Pervez and Mangat murders - so violence doesn’t always faze me, and Mill Woods is home for my people because it’s a mini-Punjab replete with Sikhs and two prominent gurdwaras.

I went to Cafe Mak on Tuesday - a day after the shooting mentioned above - to relive some old memories and eat the second-worst Butter Chicken of my life.

Cafe Mak’s Murgh Makhani consists of a few rubbery chicken breast pieces, not marinated and improperly cooked. They desperately need a few more minutes on the frying pan to reach some edibility.

A thick and gross store-bought sauce (likely Patak’s) with jizz-like specks of cream envelops the chicken to add some awful flavour. The sauce is hideous, very tomatoey, and sweeter than a Hallmark holiday movie.

On top of the sauce is a dry and dull asymmetrical clump of rice, making the dish uglier than a Mill Woods drive-by shooting.

I decided to leave the thing half-eaten because I couldn’t consume anymore - the repulsive saccharine taste was overpowering, and I would’ve vomited or defecated my pants with a few more bites. Also, the restaurant’s old attic stench made me queasy.

As I left Cafe Mak, an endless parade of farts followed me, mimicking an Indian wedding brass band. They didn’t stop in the car and made it smell like hydrogen sulfide. I had to pick up a loved one about five minutes later; they could taste the farts as soon as they sat in the passenger seat.

Later in the day, I became uncomfortably dizzy and experienced heartburn, angina, and stomach pains, which culminated in thirty minutes of painful diarrhea. It was an excruciating experience I don’t wish on my enemies.

Cafe Mak is a stain on Millhurst Pizza’s legacy, and they haven’t changed the thirty-year-old decor at all, reminding me of what it once was.

The red and yellow Hulkster-coloured walls are still there. So is the old Sanyo cathode-ray tube TV in the top corner - I’m pretty sure Millhurst patrons saw Todd Marchant eliminate the Dallas Stars in the ’97 NHL playoffs on that thing.

The ancient, multicoloured carpet remains the same; however, it’s now filthy and begging for a vacuum. There’s debris everywhere - the only thing missing is a chalk outline.

The washroom is dirty as well. The tank lid has a layer of dust, which likely accumulated over weeks, and the toilet seat has old urine stains and curly black pubic hair all over. It’s nastier than the washroom at Bulgogi House. I shudder to think how unsanitary the kitchen must be.

Although the chef/cashier/lone employee was very kind to me, repeating his you’re welcomes twice like Jimmy Two Times from GOODFELLAS, I can’t excuse him for my harrowing experience.

When I paid for my meal, he told me that he used to be a chef at a Mumbai hotel. Based on his Butter Chicken, I doubt it was a five-star hotel. It was probably a run-down motel designed for low-level drug deals and one-night stands.

It neighbours the legendary and immortal Irie Foods, a universally loved Caribbean joint featuring the best Jerk Chicken and Oxtail in Mill Woods and possibly all of Edmonton.

I'm loyal to Irie Foods and its owner, Auntie Pam Ricketts. I was once a Mill Woods tour guide for CBC's former restaurant reviewer, Twyla Campbell, and Irie Foods was the initial stop I recommended.

It was my first and only time meeting Auntie Pam; she was the most gracious host. I admired her pride and confidence in her food.

Stepping into Pakwan last Friday made me feel like I was cheating on Irie Foods with the next-door neighbour. However, this is my Butter Chicken Odyssey, and Irie doesn't have Butter Chicken. Also, CBC's food writer Phil Wilson told me Pakwan is an essential stop on my journey.

Like Irie Foods, Pakwan is a hole in the wall without any bougie decor - it's all about good food and kind service. Their flagship item is the Amritsari Chole Kulche - stuffed naan served with a spicy white chickpea curry.

Pakwan is much busier than Irie Foods. It's packed with brown people of all ages, languages, and faiths, which is a testament to the quality of their food.

I'm not trying to sound racist here, but there's a positive correlation between the number of brown people in an Indian restaurant and the quality of their food.

Pakwan is small and somewhat claustrophobic, with seven pleather booths seating about forty people, some faux-brick wallpaper, and shiny, silver ceiling tiles that remind me of Mithun's Chakraborty's gaudy outfits in the 1982 movie DISCO DANCER.

Each pleather booth has a napkin dispenser, which should be mandatory because Indian food is often messy and meant for your hands, not spoons, forks, and knives. Unfortunately, every restaurant in the Butter Chicken Odyssey thus far has failed to consider this and only gave me one napkin, resulting in messy hands and occasional orange stains on my clothes.

There are two flat-screen TVs behind Pakwan's order counter and above the sweets section and takeout boxes; one has the menu on permanent display, and the other shows alternating and eye-catching images of Tandoori Chicken, Shahi Paneer, Fish Pakora, etc.

There's also another flat-screen TV on one of the side walls, with Sikh-oriented religious music videos from the likes of Tarsem Jassar, Garry Sandhu, Sunidhi Chauhan, and Sidhu Moosewala. I'm not the biggest consumer of dharmik music - I'm a lifelong agnostic - but I sincerely appreciate my Sikh background and the sacrifices of our gurus and warriors, so I don't mind seeing all these music videos.

The washroom is in pristine shape. Even though the restaurant is full of humanity, I didn't see any pubic hair on the toilet, meaning the staff cares about cleanliness like a restaurant should.

The staff is also polite and attentive, ensuring each customer enjoys their meal and cleaning tables immediately after a customer leaves. They're Punjabi and spoke the mother tongue with me, making me feel comfortable and at home.

When I ordered the Butter Chicken, my server seemed taken aback, and I'm still unsure why. It may not be a popular item on the menu. Or maybe Indian people don't order Butter Chicken at Pakwan - I think the dish is now more popular amongst Caucasians.

Although the server's response worried me, my feelings were unnecessary because Pakwan makes incredible Butter Chicken.

The first thing I noticed in their Murgh Makhani was a clump of salted butter, slowly and sensually dissolving into the highly oily and intensely flavoured gravy like the T-800 at the end of TERMINATOR 2.

The chicken pieces are large, tender, well-seasoned, and juicy, blending smoothly with the sweet and spicy gravy, pinching my throat on the first bite.

I scooped my Butter Chicken with a terrific and decadent Garlic Naan, smothered with enough garlic to weaken David and all the Lost Boys. It enhances the flavour of the Butter Chicken tenfold, creating a titillating experience and washing out the stench left by Cafe Mak.

The Garlic Naan to Butter Chicken ratio is perfect. It allows two final bites at the end - when the meat is all done - where you can dip the naan into the gravy to soak in all its meticulous spices and get a proper feel of its debauchery and greatness.

The only thing that bothered me during my meal was the loud and obnoxious high school kids eating samosas in the booth beside me. Although I'm a huge supporter of kids being kids and celebrating one's youth, I just wanted to enjoy my food in peace and started wishing I was Freddy Kreuger so I could haunt their dreams at night and make sure they shut the hell up during my next Butter Chicken at Pakwan.

The latter gets a lot of praise in the local Punjabi community; however, I’ve never heard anyone mention Curry Corner, which doesn’t surprise me because their Butter Chicken is deplorable.

The dish is ugly and looks like orange vomit, with methi, semen, and a half-submerged, turd-like chicken piece. No cream swirl or other artistry is involved, suggesting the chef doesn’t care about his product’s visual presentation.

Although the gravy looks gross, it’s surprisingly decent-tasting - it’s got some flavour and enough zing to make my nasal passages act up.

Sadly, the unpalatable chicken breast pieces hinder the gravy from reaching its full potential. They’re overcooked by a few minutes, making the chicken impossible to chew without experiencing discomfort in your jaw muscles.

Curry Corner claims to grill their chicken in a clay oven, but I smell bullshit. The texture of the meat and the lack of a smoky aroma tell me that this stuff is the product of a frying pan.

And it’s dumped in a sauce without any marination consisting of flavour-building ingredients like turmeric, coriander, and garam masala. It’s a half-assed, inauthentic, and pathetic approach to Butter Chicken. I find it disrespectful to the customer.

Not only does Curry Corner castrate Indian cuisine with their lazy and shady shortcuts in making Butter Chicken, but they also castrate Indian pop culture by playing wack instrumental covers of Bollywood songs.

The beautiful title track from Salman Khan’s 2003 stalker film TERE NAAM gets recreated with a corny instrumental featuring flute, santoor, and porno film saxophone. The vocals of Udit Narayan and Alka Yagnik are nowhere to be found, removing the soul that made that song so great.

Curry Corner is a decent-looking restaurant. It smells lovely and is relatively clean. It has cushiony booths, sturdy and small wooden chairs, rustic wall panelling, and black & white beehive-shaped pendant lights.

Unfortunately, the walls are excrement-coloured. One wall is the colour of healthy, fibre-enhanced crap; the other wall is the colour of uncomfortable, food-poisoning diarrhea. Complementing the poop motif is a dirty toilet with two vagabond pubic hairs in the restaurant’s washroom.

The shit-coloured walls have eleven framed and matted rectangular photos of Indian life and culture, including jolly young boys at the Taj Mahal, a middle-aged woman praying, and the aftermath of Holi celebrations.

When I was at Curry Corner last night, it was dead inside. There was a septuagenarian caucasian couple that tested the friendly twenty-something server’s patience with dumb questions about chai - they even asked for the recipe - and there was an older, obnoxious Hindi-speaking uncle who randomly decided to sing “Ho Pardesia” from the overrated 1979 movie MR. NATWARLAL.

Even though the guy was acting like a clown, I decided to join him in his idiocy and sing the lines he had forgotten - it was the highlight of my lamentable experience at Curry Corner.

I’ve had a few good experiences - Chutney, Pakwan, and Monsoon. Still, the bad outweighs the good, and I’ve had some scary experiences recently, resulting in lengthy and painful diarrhea sessions on my long-suffering toilet.

Namaste India is the latest restaurant to give me the shits with the worst Butter Chicken available on Whyte Avenue.

A former friend once raved about this place, but this former friend is deranged, despised by his own family, and eulogizes loved ones at funerals in sweatpants.

I should’ve been wary of Namaste India after the person described above recommended them. Unfortunately, I forgot about his recommendation until my first few bites of the Butter Chicken, featuring the most unloved and unseasoned chicken breast pieces. They’re weird-tasting, with the texture of my daughter’s rubber duckie, and cling to your teeth and gums, refusing to let go like a parasocial relationship with a stalker.

The chicken sits in a lukewarm Campbell’s Tomato Soup replica sweeter than Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music.

There’s a cream swirl present; however, it’s haphazardly designed and looks like drunk, unsteady hands created it. There’s also gross, dissolving margarine in the bottom right of the bowl - it resembles freshly-squeezed jizz and killed my appetite.

I wanted to like Namaste India. I want Indian restaurants to succeed on Whyte Ave. We don’t have many options there. Chai Chill & Grill Cafe is temporarily closed due to staffing issues, Origin India is dead, Remedy sucks, and Spice Grill failed an AHS inspection because of mice shit in 2022. If I’m not mistaken, the only other option is Daawat, across the street from Namaste India.

Namaste India is a nice-looking restaurant with an interior brick wall, a fireplace, pendant lights, kathputlis, colourful Indian-style parasols hanging from the ceiling, and some artwork featuring young women fulfilling stereotypical roles in India, carrying clay pots on their heads, and denying the existence of Gloria Steinem.

The spacious restaurant seats over seventy people and plays mostly bad contemporary Bollywood music. Even the older stuff they play, including “Tera Hone Laga Hoon” from AJAB PREM KI GHAZAB KAHANI, is awful.

I know Bollywood is struggling to release quality music nowadays - they can’t freely copy Western tunes anymore because of the internet and million-dollar plagiarism lawsuits - but there are still glimmers of hope, like last year’s soundtrack for ANIMAL and KHO GAYE HUM KAHAN. Sadly, you won’t hear that stuff at Namaste India because they’ve got poor taste in music and food.

A pathetic beer selection - Molson Canadian, Corona, Budweiser, and Beck’s - featuring no Indian options is available to drown the pain and sorrow of an expensive and lacklustre meal.

And the poorly-stocked bar only seems to have bottles of Glenfiddich, Sauza, McDowell’s, and Bombay Sapphire for hard liquor options, meaning the restaurant has no vodka, which is bullshit because Grey Goose is now synonymous with Indian wedding receptions and always needs to be present at a desi establishment.

Namaste India’s service is kind, albeit flamboyantly awkward. When asked for my spice preference - most restaurants have failed to ask me this - I responded with “the hottest possible.”

Five minutes later, the server - with an accent thicker and more animated than Karan Johar - brought out a piece-of-shit Butter Chicken, milder than Bill Cosby’s standup act, with one napkin for me to clean the ensuing and overwhelming mess.

About fifteen hours later, I was stuck on the toilet, shitting out a few pounds, cursing Namaste India, and begging the almighty to have mercy on my chittar-hole.

Seven years ago, I rarely ate Indian food. I was no longer a fan of the ubiquitous dishes of my childhood: Aloo Gobi, Dal Makhani, and Mattar Paneer.

I found them gross and jokingly compared them to lowly scraps from a farmer’s field. This silly hyperbole deeply offended my cousin and caused a rift and lifelong rivalry.

After visiting the Sunset Grill in Queens, New York, in the summer of 2017 and eating a tremendous meaty Indian feast with Kebabs, Lamb Curry, and Tandoori Chicken, I hypothesized that my issues with Indian food were limited to the vegetarian dishes.

To test my hypothesis, I ordered the Tiffin 3, which allows you to pick three different dishes from seventeen options, ready-made and kept warm in steamers. These include vegetarian items like Paneer Pepper Masala, Palak Paneer, and Eggplant Masala, as well as carnivore-friendly items like Butter Chicken, Goat Masala, and Beef Korma.

For my first Tiffin 3, I ordered Kashmiri Lamb, Fenugreek Chicken, and Unni’s South Indian Chicken, segregated in a Captain Planet approved, compostable divided plate.

That dish changed my life. It made me realize I love Indian cuisine as long as it features meat.

Since that first Tiffin 3, I have become an Indian food fiend, devouring Pork Belly Vindaloo from Calcutta Cricket Club, Jalandhari Goat from Curry Vibes, and Lamb Curry from Zaika.

Every few months, I return to Tiffin to pay homage to the restaurant that brought me back to the cuisine and culture that made me.

On Wednesday, my wife spent the night at her mother’s house. Although she made me swear off Butter Chicken for a week or two because of my recent stomach pains, I didn’t listen. If I stop my Butter Chicken Odyssey now, I will lose momentum and develop writer’s block.

As a result, I used my solitude to visit Tiffin in Ellerslie.

It was my first time inside this location, and I was shocked by the size of the place - the ceiling was taller than Godzilla.

The open space allows room for so many activities in a clean and friendly environment. The restaurant has portraits of anthropomorphic samosas, bright and colourful murals, an auto rickshaw, and a wall with five giant tiffins towering above me like the Pantheon’s grey columns, making me feel small and expendable.

The soundtrack alternates between contemporary Bollywood and Punjabi music, with the latter being the far superior product. I especially liked hearing “Dilawara” off the last album from the PropheC, who, in my mind, is the greatest Calgarian since Bret Hart.

Tiffin’s Butter Chicken is not their best and most popular product - that title belongs to Unni’s South Indian Chicken.

Unni is Tiffin’s uber-talented chef. He’s been with the Tiffin family and their other establishments (Zaika, Bombay Palace) for twenty-five years. Tiffin’s owner once called him their “Rajinikanth,” referring to the legendary South Indian action superstar who has dominated Indian cinema and demanded demigod status since the late 1970s.

I felt stupid not ordering Unni’s South Indian Chicken - my favourite item on Tiffin’s menu - but I’m committed to the Odyssey. So I ordered a Tiffin 1 with Butter Chicken, Basmati Rice, and Garlic Naan on the side.

The ready-made Butter Chicken isn’t very spicy; however, you can punch up the heat by adding some free chillies. And there’s a little zing present - a pleasurable tingle, reminding me of when a significant other affectionately groped me at a boring local jazz gig featuring a dead-tired and yawning vibraphonist.

Although in my usual state, I would’ve made it rain chillies on the Butter Chicken like frogs in MAGNOLIA, I’m trying to take it easy and wanted the standard version of the dish, consisting of tender chicken breast softened by a garlicky, gingery, and not-too-tomatoey gravy.

Tiffin’s owner told me they rely on chicken breast because Western clientele often doesn’t respond well to thighs. Also, she confirmed that Butter Chicken should use Tandoori Chicken for its meat, but it dries out quickly and wouldn’t work well in Tiffin’s fast-and-fresh food delivery system.

There is no cream swirl present, which disappointed me - I like the artistry behind a kaleidoscopic swirl - but Tiffin’s owner told me the extra cream might be what’s damaging my stomach lately. She stated that the cream may not be refrigerated after each use at certain restaurants, collecting bacteria and filth throughout the day and causing me painful diarrhea.

And you know, she might be right because Tiffin’s Butter Chicken caused me no stomach pain or discomfort.

After my meal, I felt healthy and light, meaning the restaurant uses higher-quality ingredients in a pristine kitchen that is visible to the customer, not hidden from view.

And Tiffin’s product is easy to eat. Lately, I’ve had inedible Butter Chicken, featuring meat that refuses to soften and stays harder than a 60-something on Viagra, making for an uncomfortable and sometimes excruciating dining experience.

Sure, Tiffin’s Butter Chicken is not the infernal blaze of glory I usually want, but it’s still good and authentically flavoured.

It works well with the duo of Basmati Rice and possibly the most decadent Garlic Naan in town. The latter features multiple puddles of melted butter and is smothered with enough garlic to make Bela Lugosi suffocate and reach his final frontier.

Since that inspection went public and Spice Grill's closure became a news story, I swore never to visit them.

Then, about a week ago, a Mr. Negi encouraged me to give Spice Grill a shot, stating that he was the new owner and they were better than all the other Indian restaurants around 82nd Avenue. He also said he makes his food with "love, proper hygiene, and authentication."

I decided to believe Mr. Negi and visited the Spice Grill last weekend, only to find one of the dirtiest restaurants in town.

The first thing I noticed when I entered the joint was the overpowering stench of shit, which remained present during the entirety of my meal.

I tried to habituate to the odour, but how the hell does anyone habituate to the smell of feces? It reminded me of the "Circle of Shit" sequence from the movie SALO, where a bunch of people eat excrement at a wedding reception.

I'm assuming Spice Grill had a sewer backup recently and refused to adequately address the matter, possibly threatening their customers' safety and permanently making the entire place smell like a soiled diaper.

The odorous and claustrophobic restaurant, with a maximum seating capacity of around 15, is my version of hell. It's soundtracked by mundane instrumental covers of songs like "500 Miles" by The Journeymen, famously plagiarized by Bollywood for the film JURM.

There is a disturbing amount of filth in Spice Grill. Soot appears to cover the white walls in and around the washrooms, and the fishy-smelling sink is unclean, with a dirty faucet that I was scared to touch.

Even the teal plates are nasty, with countless white particles resembling dandruff. The chef tried to remove the particles off my plate with his bare hands, then took it away without saying anything and brought me another equally nasty plate.

Two years ago, Spice Grill's kitchen was visible to customers. Now, it's obscured with fingerprint-covered, black-tinted glass, allowing the chef to hide and do whatever he wants, even scratch his buttocks.

I highly doubt he does this; however, I wouldn't be surprised. The restaurant's uncleanliness is one-of-a-kind and shocking, making anything possible.

After seeing and smelling the joint, I didn't have high hopes for the food but was somewhat surprised.

Although the Butter Chicken is terrible overall, the meat resembles a good Chicken Tikka; it's marinated well and tastes half-decent.

Sadly, the most unattractive saccharine tomato soup, redder than the devil's lully, irreparably tarnishes the chicken, making the dish taste awful and look like freshly-squeezed turds in a bowl of blood.

I rushed through the Butter Chicken, scooping the meat with an almost passable Garlic Naan, incompetently charred from the bottom. I ate the dish fast because I didn't want the sewage smell infiltrating my clothes. I was also deathly afraid of sewage-related bacteria, parasites, and viruses infecting my body and mind.

It was a lamentable and scary experience, and I hold the owner fully responsible. Inviting an honest food reviewer and a paying customer to a filthy place like Spice Grill must take true self-confidence, bravado, and self-delusion. He told me Spice Grill is better than all the other Indian restaurants around 82nd Avenue. If that's true, I feel terrible and pray for every desi that calls Whyte home.

Most of the songs featured Amitabh Bachchan - the then-reigning king of Hindi cinema - but other stars, including veterans like Shatrughan Sinha, Neetu Singh, and Rakhee, and newcomers like Sanjay Dutt, Sunny Deol, and Rati Agnihotri also made appearances.

That videotape introduced me to Bollywood and taught me about all the significant actors from my dad's youth. It even introduced me to two South Indian superstars: Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan.

My dad always dismissed these two actors, othering them as Southerners. He said they occasionally dabbled in Bollywood but made their name in regional films in the South and couldn't find the same level of success in mainstream Hindi cinema due to their lack of talent and weirdness.

I didn't let this dissuade me from developing an affinity for Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan. My father's distaste for them made them symbols of rebellion for me.

I found Rajinikanth badass, especially when he inappropriately sported blackface and an afro in ANDHA KAANOON. And Kamal Haasan's disco dance moves in SANAM TERI KASAM were awe-inspiring. Both actors also elevated their coolness in my young mind by romancing my childhood crush, Reena Roy, in the movies mentioned above.

Although I appreciated Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan, my dad's unintentional othering of South India stuck with me over the decades, keeping me away from their music - until I fell in love with A.R. Rahman and Ilaiyaraaja in my 20s - and their cuisine.

I just never got into Dosa, Idli, and Sambar. I tried to give Southern cuisine a shot at Savoy's less than a year ago, but they gave me a fish curry that smelled like decomposing genitalia.

I visited Aachy's last week for my second South Indian dine-in experience. They specialize in Chettinad-style cuisine, which is entirely alien to me, like the glitchy Tamil music video on display at the restaurant.

I recognized the actors in the video - it was Rajinikanth courting Aishwarya Rai like an episode of Blacked Raw - but I didn't understand anything they said, which is unsettling because they have similar pigmentation to me and come from the same motherland. Still, they live and breathe a culture unfamiliar to my Punjabi identity.

Although Aachy's is a revered local restaurant, and this was the perfect opportunity to give authentic South Indian cuisine a second chance, I've got tunnel vision, and I'm on a mission, so I ordered Butter Chicken and tried the South Indian interpretation of the famous North Indian dish.

It only took Aachy's about five minutes to bring out my order, and that's not a good sign. Butter Chicken is a simple dish, but I become skeptical when making it takes just five minutes. Even Gordon Ramsay suggests that at least fourteen minutes is required to prepare the product adequately.

Aachy's Butter Chicken is strange and gave me mixed feelings.

It features the usual poorly marinated, rubbery, and difficult-to-chew chicken breast pieces that many incompetent Indian restaurants rely on; however, Aachy's gravy is otherworldly fantastic. It's littered with greenery - possibly cilantro and fenugreek leaves - and gives off these abnormal and intense flavours I'm not used to.

Still, the gravy isn't the most pleasant experience because its greenery gets stuck between your teeth, and the slimy texture is off-putting. Butter Chicken gravy should be smoother, and Aachy's needs to strain theirs, keeping the flavours and removing the slimier elements.

I tried to get some details regarding what goes into Aachy's Butter Chicken gravy, but their employee refused to divulge any information, treating me like a foreign agent. He only stated it was a homemade recipe and their mildest curry.

He also questioned my spice tolerance and toughness when I asked if they used Kashmiri mirch or cayenne pepper to spice things up. The gravy wasn't too hot but eventually made my nose run like a past-his-prime Milkha Singh.

It was frustrating not to get any significant details from Aachy's. I wasn't trying to steal their recipe like Feroz Khan when he plagiarized the legendary Tamil movie NAYAKAN for DAYAVAN and added a gratuitous sex scene, exploiting a young Madhuri Dixit.

Aachy's employee seemed to care little about the Butter Chicken - it's near the bottom of their menu - and told me I should've tried the Chettinad Chicken instead.

He was kind and had the stereotypical thick moustache that South Indian males often have. Even though Tom Selleck, Burt Reynolds, and the porn industry let go of the moustache decades ago and moved on with modern facial hair trends, South Indian men hold onto the moustache like Sam Elliott is their god.

Aachy's is a decent-sized restaurant with ten red and black booths (each seating four people) and three tables (one seating four, the others seating six).

Some titillating photos of South Indian dishes, including Masala Dosa and Mutton Sukka, are arranged neatly on one of the walls like steps on a staircase.

Unfortunately, the restaurant took these images from websites called Simple Indian Recipes and Tamil Nadu Recipes. They're not photos of Aachy's actual dishes.

Regardless, there's some obvious talent at Aachy's. Their Butter Chicken is flawed, yet I won't hold that against them because it's not their specialty. They still make a passable product with an excellent gravy, which excites me about what their flagship South Indian dishes must taste like.

Something incredible awaits me at Aachy's. I'm confident they'll be responsible for finally converting me into a fan of South Indian cuisine and expanding my mind and palate like Rajinikanth, Kamal Haasan, A.R. Rahman, and Ilaiyaraaja did many years ago.

It was also the best Bollywood song of the year, recognized by the annual Filmfare Awards, India’s version of the Oscars, when it recently won the Best Male Playback Singer award.

Despite its importance and accolades, I still haven’t heard the song at any of the restaurants during my Butter Chicken Odyssey, which frustrates me.

Sure, it’s a bloody song about axe-wielding violence on par with an unhinged Jack Torrance, but Bollywood movies and Punjabi music are often violent. It’s part of the culture, meaning it doesn’t make sense not to hear the most viral song of the year, which has dominated public consciousness since November, at any desi restaurant.

After fourteen stops on my Butter Chicken Odyssey, I finally heard “Arjan Vailly” at Masala Tree, which gave me goosebumps and made me smile. I felt like I had just found my kind of Indian restaurant.

The song surprisingly appeared between retro Bollywood instrumentals from the 50s, 60s, and 70s, including tunes from classic movies like HOWRAH BRIDGE, JULIE, and JAB JAB PHOOL KHILE.

I would prefer to hear the actual songs and the voices of Geeta Dutt, Kishore Kumar, and Mohammed Rafi; however, it’s fun to recognize the instrumentals, and some of them are experimental and done quite well - there’s an all-brass version of “Kehdoon Tumhe” from DEEWAAR that caught my attention.

Although Masala Tree won me over with its soundtrack, instilling a rare optimism, I had no idea how great my experience would be.

Masala Tree has the best customer service I’ve ever seen in an Indian restaurant. Their brown-uniformed employees, Happy, Raman, and Pinky, are attentive and pleasant. They radiate genuine smiles and represent different parts of Punjab. Still, all of them are committed to the legendary and universal brand of Punjabi hospitality.

The restaurant’s chef, Rajesh Veeranan, was born in Tamil Nadu and learned the culinary arts in Delhi, the birthplace of Butter Chicken. He has worked in many restaurants, including Bukhara in the famous ITC Maurya Hotel, and has over a quarter-century of experience making Indian cuisine.

His Butter Chicken is available in five spice levels: none, mild, medium, hot, and extra-hot. The masochist in me ordered the extra-hot, provoking Happy’s attempt to dissuade me, but I told him I’d be okay.

The extra-hot Butter Chicken gets its heat from a top-secret yellow chilli and Kashmiri mirch, my favourite spice in desi food, creating an infernal harmony that would make the most sadistic and satanic doom-metal rocker shed tears.

I saw Chef Rajesh make the stuff. His calm attention to detail, seasoning and softening the chicken with yogurt and adding numerous spices to the gravy was a sight to behold. And he was extremely kind, humble, and forthcoming in describing what goes into his flawless Butter Chicken.

The dish made me cry tears of joy and pain and turned my skin colour from a light brown to a bright red, making me look like Bruce Prichard on the Brother Love Show.

Masala Tree’s Butter Chicken is the perfect blend of masochism and flavour, and it doesn’t end - the highly generous serving of chicken felt bottomless to me.

The restaurant attracts Indians from all sides of the country, which is usually a good sign. The more Indians you see in an Indian joint, the better the food. I saw a healthy-sized crowd of Punjabis, Gujaratis, and Tamils. I even saw a middle-aged Bihari Pankaj Udhas doppelgänger wearing a floral Ed Hardy shirt and jet-black toupee. He had a confident strut that would even make Ric Flair blush.

The restaurant’s bar has Hockey Night in Canada playing on its TV and is enveloped by octagonal tiles and surrounded by a few seats. It has some local beers on tap, including Alley Kat’s Main Squeeze, Aprikat, and Scona Gold, and it also has bottles of Jameson, Glenfiddich, and Bombay Sapphire if you want to get messed up.

Even though I’m fastidious like Stanley Kubrick on a film set, I couldn’t find any flaws in Masala Tree’s presentation besides some crooked portraits of mountains and shrines. It’s a great restaurant with the biggest, spiciest, and best Butter Chicken and the friendliest service. With all these ESTs, Masala Tree feels like the Bianca Belair of local Indian restaurants and deserves all the championship glory.

Also, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Happy’s warmth and genuine concern for me. He saw me turning red and tearing up during the Butter Chicken and continued to ask if I was okay. I assured him I was and guaranteed that I was enjoying my meal.

As I was leaving, he kindly requested a Google review. A week later, I brought a CTV news reporter with me so all of Edmonton could know how great Masala Tree, its employees, and its Butter Chicken are.

It’s the most debaucherous thing. It’s buttered naan stuffed with mozzarella and cheddar cheese that is stretchier than Mr. Fantastic. And it’s smeared with enough garlic to fill the houses of all the Dracula-fearing residents of Transylvania.

I love it so much.

Eating Nacho Cheese Naan with Butter Chicken feels odd, profane, and stoneresque. Still, it’s also extraordinarily arousing and amplifies the flavour of everything, with the naan’s countless garlic particles falling into the gravy faster than a weak-chinned boxer.

The Butter Chicken is excellent—if you order it extra hot—but it’s a smaller serving, which corresponds to the low price. It features just a few tender and flavoured red morsels of chicken sitting in a highly tomatoey gravy.

Fortunately, there’s a lot of spice in the gravy, including hari mirch, to balance the tomatoey and creamy taste and create a satanic melody that left my stomach rumbling like thirty WWE wrestlers in January.

Rasoi is right outside the entrance of Jackson Heights, an area I avoided during my youth due to jealousy.

Jackson Heights was where my uncles and aunts relocated as they moved on up and started earning larger paycheques than my parents.

The houses were bigger and far more palatial, making me feel inferior and pathetic in my smaller Sakaw bi-level.

Jackson Heights also had a safer reputation than the rest of Mill Woods until Kulawy was lit up with drive-by shootings and Molotov cocktails in the early 2000s, forever colouring the reputation of the neighbourhood.

To further taint Jackson Heights, I saw a man snorting cocaine in his white Toyota RAV4 in the parking lot of Rasoi before heading into the neighbouring Pizza 73. Maybe he needed the drug to make Pizza 73’s product more edible.

Rasoi is deceptively large inside. I was expecting a tiny hole-in-the-wall from the exterior, but I walked into a big restaurant with fancy chandeliers and high ceilings. It reminded me of Emilio Estevez in LOADED WEAPON when he walked into his trailer park home, which was actually a multi-million dollar mansion inside.

The restaurant’s soundtrack sucks and features several Akshay Kumar songs with poor sound quality. I think Rasoi relies on 101.7 WORLD FM for music because many of the station’s uninspired and lazy radio jockeys play awful-sounding Bollywood songs off YouTube, replete with film dialogue that hurts the song’s flow. I also heard multiple Ford vehicle advertisements during my meal, killing the vibe.

Not only does Rasoi cut corners with its soundtrack by relying on the radio, but it also appears to be relying on IPTV like the entire desi community because the Senators and Sabres game on their TV was so warped and glitchy that the screen couldn’t keep up with the speed of the players and the puck, ruining any chances of me enjoying Canada’s favourite game.

Despite its flaws, I can’t hold any grudges against Rasoi because they introduced me to Nacho Cheese Naan, which might define my life for the rest of Spring. And their excellent Butter Chicken is good enough to excuse the worst songs of Akshay Kumar’s spotty career and a pixelated hockey game.

There were other popular jodis - Chamkila & Amarjot, Sardool & Noorie, and Pohli & Pammi - but nobody had the longevity, chemistry, and number of hits Siddiq and Ranjit Kaur had.

Even with their legendary status in our circles, I’ve never heard their music at a Punjabi-owned restaurant, which is a damn shame and a failure to respect our history.

I came close to hearing them at Saffron recently; however, the restaurant played a godawful and embarrassing cover of their iconic song “Ek Tara Vajda,” which tainted my experience and left a foul taste in my mouth, nastier than a sulfur-rich fart.

I’m okay with covers occasionally; some are great, including Balwinder Safri’s “Par Linghade” and Joe Cocker’s “With a Little Help from My Friends,” but the cover Saffron played was poorly sung, incompetently produced, and unsexy like a 50 Shades of Grey audiobook read by Fran Drescher.

The rest of Saffron’s soundtrack was also terrible. It consisted of cheesy and sloppy instrumental covers of Kishore Kumar songs from 70s and 80s movies like JAWANI DIWANI, SATTE PE SATTA, and KALAKAAR.

Things got better when the restaurant awkwardly switched to contemporary Punjabi music, including songs from Shubh’s latest EP and baby-making tunes from The PropheC.

Sadly, the Punjabi music immediately took an unforgivable hit and permanently lost momentum with the “Ek Tara Vajda” cover, almost ruining my night. I’m still upset about it weeks later.

Soundtrack aside, Saffron is a classy, clean, and spacious joint. It has brown laminate floors, white and saffron ceiling tiles, cozy booths, and a nice bar under saffron, white, and black painted swirls on a grey wall. The bar has all the high-end and low-end bottles needed to satiate the alcoholism that plagues many Punjabis.

Saffron’s Butter Chicken is nothing special. The über-tomatoey gravy does have some of the ubiquitous Indian spices, making it flavourful; however, it’s on the much sweeter side, like a Paul McCartney song, with a prominent jizzy cream swirl. It also features the most monotonous-tasting chicken breast, which is unseasoned and dry.

Saffron’s Garlic Naan is passable. They don’t char it too much like an incompetent Indian restaurant. It’s too skinny, though - I prefer my naan fat and fluffy like a summer cloud.

I don’t think I’d return to Saffron for their Butter Chicken. Still, I had an okay experience. Their potent Piña Coladas opened me up for a deep conversation about atheism, woke culture, and misogyny in third-world countries with my dinner date, whom I hadn’t seen in many years.

The service was also friendly, making my complaints about the Butter Chicken troubling. I don’t enjoy writing negative or lukewarm reviews after receiving friendly service.

Fortunately, the Butter Chicken problem at Saffron is an easily fixable one—they just need to season the chicken with turmeric, coriander, garam masala, lal mirch, and the rest of the usual suspects before tenderizing it with yogurt and cooking it in a tandoor. Then, they should add it to the gravy, which currently longs for more chillies to reduce the saccharine and tomatoey taste to a more tolerable level.

Saffron should stay faithful to the original Moti Mahal version of Butter Chicken. And they should also be loyal to the original Mohd. Siddiq and Ranjit Kaur songs. You shouldn’t modify and remake beloved classics when you don’t possess any ingenuity.

I had three friends living in the ArtsHub apartments above the Nina Haggerty Centre, and I’d often pick one of them up to go watch horror movies.

Although it was a normal-looking building, surrounded by bicyclists, lively children, and adult pedestrians during the day, things took an unsettling turn at night, and the streets became dystopian with illegal drug use, violence, and sex workers turning tricks.

Until 2015, I had never seen a sex worker in real life. I had picked them up and fornicated with them multiple times as Tommy Vercetti in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, but I had never seen one in the flesh.

It was a weird feeling, dropping off my friend at her apartment building at night and having a middle-aged sex worker approach my car and try to sell her services, shaking her stuff like Freddie Mercury at Live Aid.

A decade later, I rarely spend time on 118th. However, I ended up there recently, driving around and looking for lunch options with my daughter before taking her to the Immersive Disney Animation event at the EXPO Centre.

While searching for a restaurant, we serendipitously came across Swagat, which, according to a popular local magazine, is one of the top three Indian restaurants in Edmonton.

Upon entering the joint, the first thing that grabbed my attention was the tricoloured booths, with saffron, white, and green mimicking India’s flag.

Swagat has red, white, and mirrored walls; fancy gold-and-red drapes; a Buddha water fountain next to a bar stocked with Grey Goose, Glenfiddich, and Captain Morgan; and black ceiling tiles that, I think, were painted to disguise water damage.

Swagat’s TV played song selections from KABIR SINGH—one of my favourite Hindi films of the past few years—and transitioned to Bhangra from Ammy Virk and Jassie Gill.

The restaurant’s washroom has faux-brick walls that are golder and gaudier than Dustin Rhodes after Vince McMahon told him to embrace androgyny. The toilet had some old piss and shit stains that accumulated over a few days, resulting in a noticeable stench that bothered my daughter and prevented her from using the facility.

Swagat needs to clean their washrooms daily because what I saw is disgusting and insulting to their customers, and it made my child hold her urine until we got to the EXPO Centre, which must’ve been hard on her two-year-old bladder.

Our bespectacled Punjabi server was great. She interacted with my daughter, charming her, making her smile, and even bringing her a cocktail umbrella to play with.

I thought about ordering two Butter Chickens, including one for my kiddo. It would’ve been her first, but I kept things simple and ordered Roti with Dahi for her.

Watching my toddler eat her meal, breaking the Roti and dipping it into the Dahi, was adorable and precious. I’d share a photo, but I don’t exploit my child on a public page for likes and loves—I find that type of behaviour irresponsible, deplorable, and indicative of bad parenting.

Swagat’s Butter Chicken is terrific. It’s a decent amount of flavour-filled, moist, and chubby chicken pieces submerged in a spicy, darker-coloured gravy.

The gravy gradually builds up heat, like an episode of Hot Ones, and initially deceived me into thinking it was mild until it left me sweaty and flustered with a runny nose, red face, and tingling lips.

Although the restaurant makes an admirable Butter Chicken, it must work on its presentation. The bowls are too big for the product, making the serving look diminutive and frugal—even though there’s more than enough food inside.

Based on my experience, Swagat is worthy of its top three status in a popular local magazine; the food and customer service are excellent.

I look forward to returning to 118th Avenue and Swagat soon, but I’ll only visit during the day. The nighttime illegal drug use, violence, and prostitution that I witnessed a decade ago disturbed me and continues to disturb me today. I guess I’m just a shook one, scared to death and scared to look, and living a sheltered existence in the suburbs.

The strip mall exterior suggests a hole in the wall, beaten down, with little care for its decor. On the other hand, the interior is a fever dream, with Big Bird-yellow and cream-coloured walls clashing with blue floral wallpaper. These kitschy colours help create an uncomfortably bright restaurant that spotlights my zits, scars, and soda-stained teeth.

The washroom is even worse; it's painted a shade of white brighter than a Peter North money shot. And it smells horrible, like old urine, long-dead fish, and cheap cleaning supplies.

The restaurant's TV shows glitchy music videos from contemporary Punjabi artists, including personal favourites like The PropheC and Karan Aujla. Although I'm a fan of both artists, I'd appreciate more variety, including an oldie or two for my middle-aged soul.

Punjabi music is regressing and becoming vacuous, emphasizing trap beats that have the intellectual depth of Billy Madison. I understand that the youth appreciate this stuff. Still, Punjabi restaurants that play our music should show our history to their customers. Instead of focusing on trap beats stolen from Atlanta, they should also play our classics, returning to the halcyon days of talented musicians like Charanjit Ahuja and Kuljit Bhamra, who let traditional instruments like harmoniums, tablas, and mandolins breathe.

Punjab Platter's beer selection is boring and limited to Stella, Corona, and Budweiser. There isn't a single desi or local option, which I find disappointing.

Their Butter Chicken is significantly flawed and frustrating.

The gravy is excellent. It's creamy, moderately spicy, and loaded with tiny particles of methi, mirch, and other goodies, showing love and care in the preparation. You have to order the "extra-spicy" version, though, because the regular version tastes like tomato soup made by Jeff Foxworthy.

Although the "extra-spicy” gravy is top-notch, the frugal amount of gristly chicken breast fails the team like an incompetent goaltender during the NHL playoffs—Roberto Luongo comes to mind—with its almost inedible, bouncy ball texture, retarding the eating process and hurting your jaw from the endless chewing.

Punjab Platter's service is sweet, polite, and attentive, so I want to give them another chance. Many Indian restaurants make flawed Butter Chicken, and Punjab Platter is one of them. Regardless, their gravy, replete with a True Detective cream swirl, is among the best I've ever had. It suggests genuine talent, which might be more palpable in the restaurant's traditional Punjabi dishes.

I saw this movie over twenty years ago, and I’ve never seen a bottle of Black Dog in real life.

I thought it was a fictional product—like Big Kahuna Burger—until I finally saw the elusive Indian Whisky for the first time at Guru.

It’s part of the restaurant’s impressive liquor selection, which includes Japanese bottles like Nikka and Suntory.

Guru’s manager, the well-dressed Gurjeet Khaira, is a certified whisky ambassador and a respected mixologist, making Guru the place to be for great drinks—my personal favourite is their Matinee Show, featuring Jaisalmer Indian Craft Gin, Cucumber, St-Germain, and soda water, served in a glass Limca bottle.

I last visited Guru over a decade ago. A questionable local magazine champions the joint, and I have no faith in this publication. Their head honcho once told me my negativity isn’t her jam, which is likely the result of my reviews not being soundtracked by Country Western melodies. This elitist publication’s obsession with trendiness, style-over-substance, and celebrating mediocrity made me wary of Guru.

Unfortunately, the wariness was unjustified because Guru makes one of the best Butter Chickens in Edmonton. It’s a fiery one, with gravy from the deepest, darkest circle of hell—it left me discombobulated before an interview with CBC Radio.

I told the restaurant’s staff to make my dish “as spicy as possible,” which resulted in the chef showing no mercy like a John Kreese prodigy, suppressing the tomatoey and creamy flavours to a whimper with a desi inferno.

The soft, expertly seasoned chicken breast sits in the lava-like, fenugreek-filled gravy, soaking up all the hot flavours for a truly fantastic and mesmerizing dish that crippled my throat and changed my voice, making me sound like a demon-possessed Regan MacNeil.

Although Guru is the cleanest, classiest, and most comfortable restaurant on my Butter Chicken Odyssey thus far, I have one complaint: there’s no desi music.

Mr. Khaira attended the recent sold-out Diljit Dosanjh gig at Rogers Place, so I know he likes Punjabi music, and I’d appreciate songs from Dosanjh releases like MoonChild Era, Drive Thru, and Ghost over Guru’s current EDM soundtrack, which includes a lousy cover of Drake’s “Hotline Bling.”

Still, I empathize and understand the restaurant needs to cater to Western clientele in the Ice District, and I can’t fault them for their food. They also won me over entirely when I exited their gorgeous black-and-white and grey-tiled washroom and came face-to-face with a framed collage of all the Bollywood villains that haunted my childhood, including Bob Christo, Sudhir, Ajit, Amrish Puri, and Prem Chopra.

In 2022, they voted for Save-On-Foods, a grocery store, as their second-best Asian restaurant, over joints like Special Noodle House and Kobachi.

Recently, some folks from Sherwood Park encouraged me to visit their hamlet and try India Taj. They promised me greatness.

The Indo-Chinese restaurant is a tiny hole in the wall. It has just six small wooden tables, seating about twenty people, with an isolated table for two placed awkwardly off-center. The tables are low and collide with my knees, and the wooden chairs are harsh on my back, resulting in significant discomfort.

The restaurant has khaki and cream-coloured walls, brown laminate floors, white suspended ceiling tiles, and a squished and dead insect on the washroom wall.

The three cheap Sharp-branded TVs play boring scenes of grass, flowers, and waterfalls—erotica for David Suzuki types—and terrible contemporary Bollywood music videos starring Emraan Hashmi and Varun Dhawan.

Bollywood music usually sucks now. The producers can no longer freely plagiarize Western Pop music because the internet will call them out on it, making lawsuits inevitable.

So producers now often exploit Punjab’s creativity, remaking and butchering their classic songs and fetishizing the community.

Sadly, Punjabis are usually eager for recognition after decades of oppression and marginalization in India, so they embrace Bollywood.

This situation partially explains why the entire country is currently enamoured with Diljit Dosanjh but never gave the same love to Malkit Singh and Surjit Bindrakhia in the 1990s.

India Taj’s beer selection—ironically placed behind a Buddha statue—is limited to Corona, Budweiser, and Kingfisher.

The small hard liquor selection includes old school favourites like Black Label and Crown Royal. The former was a favourite of the desi community from the 1970s to the mid-2000s, and the latter remains the perennial Punjabi favourite that made me make bad choices during my adolescence.

The customer service was polite and friendly initially; however, it became nonexistent after I paid for my meal in advance. There was no further interaction, and the entire staff stayed in the kitchen—the chef came out briefly, but he didn’t say a single word to me and switched channels on the TV to play more waterfalls than TLC.

India Taj’s Butter Chicken is mostly forgettable.

The gravy is thick, flavourful, and spicy, with minimal cream, preventing it from tasting too sweet, like a speech from Mr. Rogers telling you how special you are.

Unfortunately, the gravy is marred and overpowered by many rubbery cubes of poorly marinated chicken breast, deterring it from having any pleasurable impact on me. The chicken is so dull that it’s on par with a sex life that consists solely of the missionary position—and no dirty talk.

The fluffy Garlic Naan is overcooked and hard on the bottom, like my father’s blue-collar callused hands. It makes India Taj’s Butter Chicken experience even more lamentable and reinforces my mistrust of Sherwood Park and its residents.

Everybody knows the former; the latter is a phenomenon only middle-aged desis understand.

It’s an undeserving film that became a blockbuster, launching actor Salman Khan into superstardom and director Sooraj R. Barjatya into a successful career that saw him make beloved, family-friendly movies like HUM AAPKE HAIN KOUN and HUM SAATH-SAATH HAIN.

Although I liked MAINE PYAR KIYA as a four-year-old in 1989 and have lots of nostalgia for it, I’m now mature enough to know that it’s a stupid movie.

Still, I enjoy the soundtrack—even if it relies on plagiarism.

The composer Raamlaxman lifts the melody from Stevie Wonder’s “I Just Called to Say I Love You” for the title track and the oh-oh-oh-ohs from Baltimora’s “Tarzan Boy” for “Aaya Mausam Dosti Ka.” He even steals the keyboard riff from Europe’s “The Final Countdown” on “Mere Rang Mein Rangne Wali,” which Himalayan Village played last Tuesday.

Sadly, the version they played was an awful cover instead of the original by the legendary S.P. Balasubrahmanyam. And this cover didn’t even have the iconic keyboard riff.

Just imagine “The Final Countdown” without that signature riff. It would suck, and that’s exactly how I feel about Himalayan Village’s soundtrack, consisting of corny Bollywood covers sung by tone-deaf vocalists.

There’s even a cover of a Mohammed Rafi tune.

I don’t understand the need to play remakes of songs by the greatest singer ever. If Rafi was good enough for the American film GHOST WORLD, he’s also good enough for a small-time Indian restaurant.

Based on my past great experiences with Himalayan Village, ordering take-out Chole Bhature, I expected the aromas of Indian food to fill my soul as I entered the restaurant.

On the contrary, the most rank body odour—the kind you smell in the locker room after a minor league hockey game—grabbed me and refused to let go.

At first, I thought it was the restaurant employees; however, I soon realized it was another customer—a middle-aged, long-haired gentleman in neon-coloured shorts—who likely decided not to wash his armpits and genitals that day.

His Pepé Le Pew smell stunk up the whole restaurant, nearly making me suffocate.

Fortunately, the washroom, which smelled soapy and minty, provided a temporary refuge from the putrid customer.

The restaurant’s decor is forgettable. There’s a red and white theme—the walls mimic the colours of the only Alberta NHL team that didn’t make the playoffs this year or last. And there’s a giant, blurry portrait of the Himalayan mountains that makes those pirated DVDs I used to rent from A-Class Spice Bazaar look like Criterion editions.

Despite the infuriating music, funky odour, and bland decor, I still anticipated greatness from Himalayan Village’s Butter Chicken because their Chole Bhature are fantastic, and I love them.

But their Butter Chicken was the antithesis of what I expected.

Like many other local Indian restaurants, Himalayan Village relies on a frugal amount of unseasoned chicken breast, which is tough to chew because it’s drier than my dermatitis-riddled ears after a few days without Topicort.

The chicken is served in a mediocre, fenugreek-rich gravy with a minimal spicy kick—on par with a foot jab from a novice Muay Thai student—in an ergonomically unfriendly, oval-shaped bowl. My giant man hands and long fingers struggled to maneuver in that thing.

It was another disappointing and demoralizing experience that made me further regret this odyssey.

Also, the other customer’s body odour infected my Oilers hoodie, invaded my car, and lingered there for hours, reminding me of that Seinfeld episode.

Initially, I just wanted to enjoy the restaurant’s Butter Chicken for the first time with my bearded and burly friend Nino. But a few Coors Banquets transmogrified into stiff Captain Morgan cocktails, and I think there was a shot or two—I can’t remember.

I must’ve felt comfortable drinking at Zaika because they’ve been good to me over the years.

In the past, they let me use their restaurant for a photo shoot with the Edmonton Journal, which spotlighted fringe local food bloggers.

They even let me and my friends shoot the Mill Woods-themed episode of an upcoming Storyhive web series at the restaurant.

And I remember once, a few months ago, I asked Zaika’s owner for a Kingfisher, a popular Indian beer. They had run out of it, so they immediately went to the liquor store—without telling me—to buy a 24-pack to ensure I had enough to last me a few hours. Who does things like that?

That’s exemplary service, which can be hard to find at some Indian restaurants due to cultural differences, elitism, and language barriers.

Zaika’s nostalgic and progressive soundtrack, which I think is the best soundtrack among our local Indian restaurants, also sets the mood for drinking—Punjabi music is often tailor-made for alcohol use.

Zaika’s playlist has one foot set in modernity, with singers like Riar Saab and The PropheC, and the other set in tradition, with legends like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Lata Mangeshkar, catering to multiple generations.

And deeper cuts appear, including the soothing acoustic mix of Dr. Zeus and Master Rakesh’s “Kangna” from the classic album Unda Da Influence.

There’s the occasional Hip-Hop anomaly. Still, it flows well and doesn’t hurt the cadence of the desi soundtrack, especially for a Hip-Hop head like me—I welcome songs like Erick Sermon’s “Music” because I idolize EPMD.

When it opened fifteen years ago, Zaika, an Urdu term for flavour, made a grand statement. It was a unique and stylish restaurant serving dishes from all over India, with a buffet set-up that looked like a space-age Ernst Blofeld control station.

Zaika presented an alternative to the grimy, stereotype-reinforcing, and awful hole-in-the-walls my parents frequented during my childhood. And Zaika’s food was and always has been solid, explaining their longevity in the fickle restaurant business.

I’ve tried their Tandoori Chicken, Fish Pakora, and multiple lamb dishes, and I’ve always been impressed. Their Butter Chicken is no different.

It’s available in four spice levels. I went with the highest level because I’m a lifelong masochist, which is likely the result of the beatings my dad gave me during my early years—he once beat me with a field hockey stick because my neighbour stole my NHLPA 93 video game for the SNES.

The fourth spice level—it could be hotter, but a day without diarrhea is a good day—creates a Charanjit Ahuja-esque harmony of sweet and savoury, with expertly marinated and tenderized chicken chunks that are softer than the restaurant owners who can’t handle my criticism.

The gravy is beautiful, thick, and full of greenery, including a lot of fenugreek, but none of it’s stringy and doesn’t get stuck in your teeth. Three chilli peppers are planted in the centre if you want to amplify things and take the spice to another dimension. And there’s a pretty, kaleidoscopic cream swirl that belongs on a Rorschach test—I see a skull.

The great food and soundtrack were enough to make me happy and earn a glowing review, but last night’s service made this one of the best restaurant experiences of my Odyssey.

Zaika’s owner, Garry—a towering fellow Harry Ainlay alumnus who influenced how my generation spent their Tuesdays—has always been kind to me. Last night, he introduced me to onion seed-covered naan, which blew my mind, and he talked with me about many things: the current Oilers playoff run, fatherhood, India’s freedom fighters, and Sanjay Dutt movies.

By the end of my meal and our conversation, I was too tipsy to drive home. So, I decided to make the 30-minute trek through the mean streets of Summerside on foot. Fortunately, Garry sympathized with me over my impending plight and forced a ride home, guaranteeing my safety.

In 1975, the middle-aged teacher and principal immigrated to Edmonton from India, only to find a province that refused to recognize her teaching credentials, forcing her to find a new career in the food industry.

At first, she worked at restaurants like Bistro Praha and La Bohème, preparing meals.

Almost a decade later, she decided to do things independently and started New Asian Village in 1983, introducing thousands of Edmontonians to India’s cuisine.

New Asian Village has a complicated reputation. Many Caucasians love it for introducing them to Indian food, but many Indians despise it for the same reason. The restaurant simultaneously popularized Indian cuisine and demystified it in our city.

Edmonton-born Indians often learn to hate New Asian Village because of what our parents say about it. My dad despises the place and calls it the McDonald’s of Indian food, questioning its authenticity and integrity, and I know several uncles and aunts who feel the same way.

However, New Asian Village’s polarizing reputation is unfair to Surjit Kapur’s reputation. She remains Edmonton’s Madhur Jaffrey, and we shouldn’t deny her and her restaurant’s legacy.

She colonized Edmonton with our cuisine, normalizing it so millennial brown kids like me wouldn’t get smirks and stank faces from white kids and teachers in the school lunchroom when we opened our Ninja Turtle lunchboxes full of Aloo Gobi and Saag.

Denying New Asian Village its legendary status and importance is equivalent to a gatekeeper turning their back on an indie band because the band signed a major record deal and finally achieved success and fame.

It’s silly and irrational behaviour, and I admit I’m often guilty of it. We don’t want to be othered, but many of us refuse the Western masses our culture and cuisine because we want it to remain only ours. This behaviour prevents integration.

We’re quick to label someone a sell-out when they help normalize and cater something of ours to Westerners and make it accessible. But don’t we want to be normalized and accessible? Or do we want to remain forever exotic and esoteric?

I recently went to New Asian Village on 34th Avenue in Little India for the first time, expecting mediocrity and watered-down Indian food because of what I’ve heard from my elders.

The first thing that struck me about the restaurant was the anachronistic display of two giant Bhangra dancer statues above the entrance, on top of the building. These statues orientalize the joint and clash with its Bollywood soundtrack—I didn’t hear a single Bhangra song.

The restaurant is spacious, clean, and dimly lit. It has expensive-looking statues of Hindu deities, emerald green cushions, Mahabharata artwork, and intricate wooden art pieces engraved with desi instruments like dholkis, tumbis, bajas, and tablas. Ironically, none of these instruments appeared on the restaurant’s playlist.

The buffet is in front of the visible kitchen, neatly arranged in two rows on granite countertops. It features Lamb Curry, Chilli Chicken, Uttapam, Navratan Korma, and more, ready-made and warm in steamers.

Next to the buffet is a fridge full of beer, including Budweiser, Kokanee, Alexander Keith’s, and India’s favourite, Kingfisher.

I ordered the Asli Butter Chicken. Asli means “authentic” in Hindi, Urdu, and Punjabi, so New Asian Village is trying to make a statement to differentiate their Murgh Makhani from other Indian restaurants serving “Nakli” Butter Chicken.

I wasn’t expecting much, but my first bite of the Butter Chicken scooped in jaundice-coloured Garlic Naan was a WTF moment, wowing me and making me want to yell at my dad, uncles, and aunts for the false things they said about New Asian Village and brainwashing me like the Manchurian Candidate. I immediately lamented all the years I lost, thinking New Asian Village was uncool, inauthentic, and too mainstream. I was wrong.

Their Butter Chicken is genuinely one of the best in Edmonton.

The bottomless, tandoor-grilled chicken pieces are morbidly obese, affectionately seasoned, and redder than a baboon’s bottom.

They sit submerged in a spicy, thick, darker-coloured gravy filled with fenugreek, dissolving butter, and enough green chillies to make me sweat like Drake on the streets of Compton.

The cream swirl isn’t the most visually appealing—it’s just a bunch of random ugly lines that blend with the dissolving butter and have no artistry behind them—but these are quibbles because New Asian Village makes a surprisingly brilliant Butter Chicken that makes me question the intelligence of my immediate and extended family.

It’s a Butter Chicken worthy of Surjit Kapur’s towering legacy as the matriarch of Edmonton’s Indian food scene.

The interior has garish blue and yellow subway tiles clashing with poorly installed faux-wood wallpaper. Several framed pop art pieces, brighter than Lichtenstein, are on display, complementing the kitschy tiles.

One of these pieces features dialogue from OM SHANTI OM, Shah Rukh Khan’s last great movie. There’s also a portrait of two brown guys on a motorcycle with an attached sidecar, paying homage to the classic song “Yeh Dosti” from SHOLAY.

Strangely, the two men in the portrait look nothing like SHOLAY’s stars, Dharmendra and Amitabh Bachchan, but instead resemble Danny Denzongpa and Rajinikanth, which bothers me because the only memorable movie moment I remember with those two together is when Rajinikanth murders Danny in ANDHAA KANOON.

There are also Dick Tracy-yellow lights throughout Bay Leaf—the one in the washroom is so bright and yellow it’ll make your teeth urine-coloured when you smile in the mirror.

The restaurant is nipple-hardening cold inside and has a peculiar smell. I wouldn’t say it’s rancid, but it reminds me of the Ramgharia Gurdwara’s washroom in 1991, suggesting Bay Leaf might be using the same cleaning supplies.

Bay Leaf has a disappointing, mostly contemporary Bollywood soundtrack.

The first song I heard was Atif Aslam’s “Tera Hone Laga Hoon” from AJAB PREM KI GHAZAB KAHANI. That awful song has played at 16% of the desi restaurants I’ve visited this year: Chutney, Namaste India, New Asian Village, and Bay Leaf.

And it finally triggered me at Bay Leaf, making me complain to my server. She told me it was a “very famous song” and started singing it, which I found pretty charming and funny.

But seriously, who cares if it’s a “very famous” song? It’s dumb and tarnished by cheesy English lyrics. Also, Atif Aslam had a far better tune on the same soundtrack (i.e. “Tu Jaane Na”).

Bay Leaf doesn’t create its own playlist. The joint relies on a tired YouTube video called “O Maahi Mashup 2.0,” featuring uninspired melodies and embarrassing Hindi lyrics that probably make poets like Anand Bakshi and Sahir Ludhianavi roll over in their graves.

If you’re a restaurant that plays contemporary Bollywood music, your playlist must include Punjabis and their Bhangra because Bollywood music sucks now.

There’s a reason why the Ambanis hired Punjabi superstars like Diljit Dosanjh, AP Dhillon, and Karan Aujla for their never-ending wedding festivities.

There’s also a reason why Vicky Kaushal collaborated with Karan Aujla to breathe life into his latest film, BAD NEWZ, a spiritual sequel to one of the worst movies I’ve seen.

Bollywood desperately needs Bhangra and Punjab’s ingenuity because they can no longer freely plagiarize from the West, and their ideas have dried up. The current Hindi songs are difficult to distinguish, and the actors don’t mime as much in the movies, making the non-diegetic tunes more forgettable.

Bay Leaf’s food took longer than expected to make, but that’s a good sign at a desi restaurant because nothing says garbage like Indian food prepared within five minutes. If you need proof, visit our Remedy Cafes, where I think microwaves hold the sous chef position.

While waiting for our food, we enjoyed some fantastic and refreshing sweet lassis. One of them was rose-flavoured, oozing summertime vibes like Mungo Jerry.

The Butter Chicken arrived about twenty minutes after my order. And it was outstanding.

The strong, savoury flavour hit me immediately—faster than any other Butter Chicken on the Odyssey so far—and the gravy’s green chilli-heat built up patiently with each piece of seasoned and succulent chicken, playing rope-a-dope until it finally grabbed my throat and burned it like gonorrhea.

Although the Butter Chicken left my ears ringing, temples tingling, and cheeks redder than a young boy who just got caught masturbating by his mother, I had to speak to the staff right after my meal to compliment them.

I recognized the chef, who resembles Bollywood character actor Manoj Pahwa, because he worked at the much-loved Indian Villa and catered for one of my brother-in-law’s wedding events. His food wowed most guests at the event, including my hard-to-please parents. He also requested Sidhu Moosewala songs that night, making Bay Leaf’s current all-Hindi soundtrack inexcusable.

The staff asked me for a Google review, which suggested desperation, but I understood why. As mentioned earlier, Bay Leaf is a new restaurant, and we were the only customers there during our hour-long visit on a Saturday evening, indicating the joint might need immediate help to survive.

It faces stiff competition from neighbours like PrimeTime Donair, Panago, Buco, and Dairy Queen, so it needs to stand out and create excellent food to make the motherland proud.

And it does.

Bay Leaf would make the motherland so proud with their Butter Chicken. It’s one of the best in Edmonton and good enough to make Nargis grab a fistful of India’s dirt with pride and shed a tear.

Although I think playing an album in its entirety at a restaurant is lazy DJing—the kind that I tried to eliminate at a local radio station when I chaired their programming committee—the album is a dying art form in Punjabi music, and only recently did it see a resurgence.

As a result, I welcome albums and appreciate hearing Amrinder Gill’s latest full-length effort, featuring production from Dr. Zeus, at Mezbaan.

I also love Amrinder Gill—his dreamy vocals never fail to put me in a trance. A mainstay in my playlists since 2005’s “Dildarian,” Gill creates baby-making Punjabi music and can switch effortlessly between ballads and dance-floor bangers, exuding a rare class that complements the beautifully designed Mezbaan.

The first thing that grabbed my attention at Mezbaan was their towering, framed prints of Manoor Shah’s gorgeous oil paintings celebrating Indian dance forms like Kathak and Bhangra.

The dining area has a faux brick-walled bar, multiple square tables surrounded by upholstered, teal-coloured chairs, and six booths with red and pink pleather cushions. Two booths are enclosed in decorative gold panels, cocooning you from the rest of the patrons so you can freely gossip and dirty your face with Dal Makhani.

Hanging from the ceiling are red and brown suspension lamps and several expensive Bose speakers, making Amrinder Gill’s vocals sound crisper than a Rick Rubin production.

The restaurant serves its food on fancy, gold-rimmed ceramic plates with golden cutlery fit for a Maharaja. Even the napkins are high-end; they’re so soft and cushiony that I wanted to steal some for the next day’s diarrhea session.

Mezbaan’s extra-spicy Butter Chicken isn’t the best thing to eat during a heatwave hot enough to drive you Berkowitz-mad. Still, it’s a work of desi art featuring tandoor-cooked, masala-covered chicken submerged in an intense gravy with elaborate and interconnected streams of cream, oil, and butter, slowly dissolving to fade away and radiate in an infernal abyss.

The gravy’s tomato flavour is more pronounced than most Butter Chicken; however, Mezbaan balances it with unhinged amounts of green and red chilli, which combine like two devout Satanists to test your spice and flavour threshold.

I ordered a Mango Lassi and Gulab Jamun to handle the Butter Chicken’s heat level better and minimize my sweatiness.

And I let Amrinder Gill’s album play out to its conclusion before young stars like Shubh, The Landers, and Navaan Sandhu took over the speakers.

Although I’m a big fan of this new stuff, my aging soul was praying for an oldie—something for the Bhangraheads that remember when Jazzy B first dropped “Ghugian Da Jorra” in 1993.

That never happened, but I didn’t let it taint my experience. Mezbaan is a chic and pristine restaurant that is perfect for date nights. And it serves extraordinary Butter Chicken, soundtracked by modern Punjabi music. It’s probably the closest to heaven I’ll ever be.

The latter makes a few appearances on Annam’s small and poor-sounding Sony TV, but it’s not a good song selection from his landmark movies like SADMA, EK DUUJE KE LIYE, and NAYAKAN. Instead, it’s bombastic Tamil film tunes that eventually become more annoying than the vuvuzelas at the 2010 World Cup.

Annam opened in January 2023 and quickly developed a cult following, earning an impressive 4.8 rating on Google.

It’s a small joint with a capacity of about forty. The walls are orange, green, and white, capturing the colours of India’s flag. For some strange reason, green only appears on the washroom walls, next to an out-of-place, 3-D portrait of a Woolly Mammoth.

Annam has many weird aesthetic choices, which shows why hiring a competent contractor and interior decorator can be essential before opening a restaurant.

The drywall is poorly painted, unevenly cut, and doesn’t connect with the ceiling, resulting in a large, noticeable gap. Concrete tiles on the floor awkwardly transition into laminate without a transition strip. And the biggest eyesore is the Kirkland-branded vodka proudly displayed on the bar’s shelves, suggesting extreme philistinism.

The booth seating is comfortable; there’s brown synthetic leather for your bottom and tall, carpet-like backrests to keep your spine straight, which is nice because I messed my back up recently and have been living off Voltaren.

Annam’s Butter Chicken is a peculiar product. Its spice and flavours are potent and memorable, but it has significant and annoying flaws.

There are only five measly pieces of chicken breast in a gravy that desperately needs a blender—it’s full of distracting greenery, including cilantro, cardamom, and multiple bay leaves.

The cardamom is incredibly jarring and almost ruins the gravy. It’s an unpleasant-tasting seed that many desis use as mints—my dad relied on it to disguise his liquor breath back in the day when my mom came home from work.

The gravy still tastes good—it’s thicker than Deepika Padukone’s accent, and the spice overpowers the sweetness—but it’s hindered by all these large green particles mentioned above, giving it the texture of crunchy peanut butter. And I prefer my gravy smoother than Big Daddy Kane on a Marley Marl beat.

Annam doesn’t have Garlic Naan or any other type of Naan. The pleasant server, who wobbled her head—an Indian gesture that means “yes, good, maybe, okay, and I understand”—enough to earn a neck strain, suggested a South Indian Parotta: an expensive, fluffy, tasteless, and disappointing thing that flaked more than a fair-weather friend.

When I left Annam, I found a business card full of spelling mistakes from a local astrologer, known as Master Murali, on my car window, promising to use pseudoscience to fix all my issues, including sexual problems.

I felt the urge to call this charlatan and pretend to be impotent, but I noticed that his business card stated he had expertise in black magic. Although I don’t believe in that nonsense, I recently saw SHAITAAN, a scary Bollywood movie in which a cursed ladoo puts a young girl under a spell and almost destroys her family.

That film freaked me out, so I threw the card away, went home, washed my hands clean of Master Murali’s kala jadoo germs, and took a nap after rubbing Voltaren all over my back, which I injured after the slats under my bed broke—I think I need to stop eating so much Butter Chicken.

The no backyard-having, cookie-cutter, vinyl-sided homes make me sick. They’re right next to each other, packed so tightly that you can hear your neighbours having sex.

And whenever a car drives by, all you hear is Sidhu Moosewala.

I’m not a hater. I like Moosewala—“Dollar” and “Bambiha Bole” are personal favourites—but other singers do exist.

Recently, I was in Garneau, enjoying a pizza slice from Sepp’s, and heard The Rolling Stones, T. Rex, and Santana on the streets. Hell would have to freeze over before you hear these legendary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame-inducted bands on the streets of Ellerslie. Most of my neighbours don’t even know who Keith Richards is.

I want out of Ellerslie. I’ve lived there for five years and have had enough. I don’t even like taking my daughter out for a walk there in the dwarf tree-lined, turmeric-seasoned streets, so we’ve been exploring other neighbourhoods during our walks, including Bearspaw, Lendrum, Ottewell, and more.

We went for a walk in Silver Berry last month and serendipitously came across Baba’s Chicken. It’s a strip mall takeout operation with roots dating back to 1962 in Ludhiana, my ancestral city in Punjab, India.

Outside the joint, in the parking lot, I saw two twenty-something Punjabi guys loitering, cussing (“panchodes” and “machodes were ubiquitous), and listening to—you guessed it—Sidhu Moosewala, blaring from their Mustang’s stereo.

A few young women were chatting near the restaurant’s entrance, wearing colourful Punjabi suits flashy enough to attend a wedding reception at Meridian Banquet Hall. I’m not sure why they were overdressed—Baba’s neighbours include Hello India, Y-Not Indian Bistro & Bar, and MLA Jasvir Deol’s office, and none of these spots would justify the expensive and imported suits.

Inside Baba’s Chicken, a thirsty, middle-aged, beer-bellied, and large-bosomed male customer was hitting on the young female cashier. The first few buttons on his light-blue dress shirt were left open, revealing cleavage deeper than Salma Hayek’s. He talked to the cashier about the Karan Aujla gig in August. I tried not to listen because I missed the concert, which still hurts. I wanted to hear “Softly” and “Admirin’ You” live as much as all the Punjabi students that flooded Canada during Justin Trudeau’s regime.

I encouraged my wife to go to that gig and enjoy it while I stayed home with our toddler. I could’ve left the kid with somebody else and enjoyed the Aujla concert, too, but I’m a helicopter parent. I don’t trust anyone with my child. A NICU stay after her birth heightened my thanatophobia, and I have a lot of unresolved childhood trauma that made me lose faith in humanity. I also have an unhealthy obsession with the Punky Gustavson murder. That gruesome story has haunted my dreams for three decades.

Baba’s Chicken is smallish inside, with no dine-in option and eight uncomfortable white stools where you can sit and wait for your food. The wait is lengthy because the place is bustling, catering to the thousands of Punjabis on the southeast side of town. I didn’t see a single Caucasian customer during my thirty-minute wait.

The joint is new and pristine, cleaner than Howard Hughes’ hands. The grey-tiled floor transitions into a greenery-covered counter, where “Baba’s Chicken” is written in cursive in neon red-and-white lights. Above the counter are shiplap ceiling panels, wicker light fixtures, and thatch to mimic a hut.

Baba’s soundtrack is all contemporary Punjabi music, featuring a lot of derivative dreck with no shelf life and many machismo-driven songs. There wasn’t a single female on the playlist during my visit, which I found disappointing and perplexing because women like Jasmine Sandlas, Jenny Johal, Gurlej Akhtar, Nimrat Khaira, Sunanda Sharma, Kaur B, and more run things. It’s not like my childhood thirty years ago when we only had Amar Noorie and Kamaljeet Neeru to represent the ladies.

Also worth noting is that the restaurant’s imagery appears to be very grandson-focused. There are pictures of grandparents with their grandsons—more than likely paternal ones—on the wall and a little boy with santra candy covering his eyes on the menu. But there are no granddaughters, which complements the lack of female voices on the soundtrack.

As a proud girl dad and feminist, I was bothered by the lack of female representation on the walls, menu, and soundtrack. It’s possibly unintentional, but misogyny, dowries, and sex-selective abortions have plagued Indian culture for centuries, so I’m always on high alert for sexism.

As for the food, Baba’s overpriced, bone-in Butter Chicken has no tomato foundation, making it unusual and unlike any Murgh Makhani I’ve had. There is no deep orange colour or cream swirl. The dish resembles an ugly blend of Moong Dal and liquified feces, with poorly-flavoured and yellowed chicken inside.

Some of the chicken is tender, sliding off the bone and dropping into the gravy faster than Harry Dunne’s Turbo Lax turds. Sadly, the remaining low-quality chicken is gristly and requires incel-level hand labour to dismantle it.

And the flavours are wildly and stupidly off. I couldn’t taste any garam masala and lal or hari mirch, which, alongside tomato, are integral elements to making great Butter Chicken. I only tasted fenugreek and highly creamy and disgusting pseudo Butter Chicken that left my nails urine-coloured and my mouth numb with a gross, saccharine taste, sweeter than the sappiest Sooraj R. Barjatya movie.

During this time, veteran film producer Nasir Hussain dropped QAYAMAT SE QAYAMAT TAK. This landmark movie captured the nation’s youth. It introduced new actors Aamir Khan and Juhi Chawla, new music producers Anand Srivastava and Milind Srivastava, and new singers Alka Yagnik and Udit Narayan to the masses.

Together, these young upstarts created a revolution with QAYAMAT SE QAYAMAT TAK, a tragic love story filled with beautiful, more traditional-sounding songs that brought romance and melody back to India, paving the way for classic musicals like CHANDNI, MAINE PYAR KIYA, and AASHIQUI and forming the soundtrack to my childhood.

Last month, on October 12, I saw Udit Narayan live in Calgary at the Grey Eagle Event Centre. It was a dream come true for me because Narayan is my favourite singer alive. I’d argue that he’s the most important Indian singer of the past 35 years—his iconic voice changed the game and helped save Bollywood music and movies in the late 80s and early 90s.

Now pushing 70 years old, Narayan remains eternally youthful and puts on a great set, telling jokes and running through universally loved songs from blockbusters like DILWALE DULHANIA LE JAYENGE, DARR, and GADAR to an adoring crowd of mostly Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs, united by their love of Bollywood.

It was a beautiful and loving environment and the antithesis of these Indian nationalists and separatists clashing on the streets and places of worship on Canadian soil, creating a frightening spectacle for white people, reinforcing xenophobia, and endangering us Indo-Canadians who want to live peaceful lives and raise our children.

After the gig, I went to Passage to India, a restaurant in Downtown Calgary with a name inspired by a 1924 E.M. Forster novel set during the British Raj. I was expecting colonial-era decor and something regal and eye-catching like Calgary’s Calcutta Club; however, I walked into a poorly designed restaurant, longing for an interior decorator or somebody with a modicum of taste.

Greeting me at the entrance was cheap, fake brick wallpaper lined at the bottom with Mughal-style stick-on tiles, which also make an appearance on each table, and yellow garlands composed of ladoo-like balls that I’d expect around my neck if I were exchanging wedding vows with a Brahmin bride.

Deeper inside the tile-floored restaurant are generic rattan lights, parasols, and decorative blue, orange, and red stars hanging from the ceiling. The majority of walls have random pieces of artwork, some images of Hindu deities—the restaurant has an affinity for Krishna and Radha—and one of the walls has wallpaper consisting of a stock photo of the Paro District in Bhutan, which is a two-and-a-half-hour flight from India and has nothing to do with our cuisine.

It’s not the most aesthetically pleasing restaurant. But many of our restaurants are about ostentatiousness and orientalism rather than good taste and harmony. Still, I’m willing to let these things slide. Not everybody has an eye for design like Wes Anderson.

What truly ruins the Passage to India experience is the neighbouring Play Bar & Lounge and its obnoxious and loud music, which overwhelms the restaurant’s walls and makes them shake. The bass was so powerful that I could feel the groove tickling my testicles while sitting in my booth. I found myself getting dizzy and lightheaded, desperately trying to maintain my equilibrium and expecting to go deaf for a few days, like when I saw Nine Inch Nails in New York.

Passage to India tries to compete with Play with their soundtrack—I heard the faint voices of Lata Mangeshkar and Udit Narayan—but Play Radio Raheems them into submission and turns it into a place of cacophonic misery, which is demoralizing because the food is excellent, explaining why droves of people, including large families, couples, loners (i.e. me), and burly uncles were walking in near the midnight hour, overwhelming the solo green-bloused, Hindi-speaking, people-pleasing, and tattooed server.

Passage’s reasonably priced Butter Chicken doesn’t have the best meat—it’s limited to breast and needs to be smokier and further tenderized—but the gravy is fiery and fantastic. There’s minimal sweetness, and it’s smoother than pimp talk and dotted with evil amounts of hari mirch, resulting in a green inferno.

As my throat started to burn, I tried to suppress the incoming pain with a Mango Lassi, which was extremely and stupidly thick, making it impossible to suck through the anorexic straw—even if you had Linda Lovelace’s oral skills.

With no other solution to treat the pain, I remembered the years of learned helplessness as a U of A student and realized that they prepared me for a life of suffering. So, I decided to set the undrinkable lassi aside and embraced the pain of Passage to India’s green inferno, which hours later burned my penis.

I’m old and can’t hold my urine anymore, so I had to take a piss break during my drive back to Edmonton. Unfortunately, it was well past midnight, and everything was closed, so I drove to a forested area in front of some two-story suburban homes in Westlake and urinated capsaicin on the first bush I saw. I could've and should've gone deeper into the dark woods for more privacy, but I was scared and didn’t want to awaken the Blair Witch.

I’m in London, England.

I’m not here for sightseeing. I’m not here for Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, and the Tower of London. I’m here for something far more important to me: Bhangra.

I’m a mid-80s Punjabi baby, which means that my earliest memories were soundtracked by the golden age of British Bhangra and bands like Alaap, Premi, DCS, Apna Sangeet, and Golden Star pushing the sonic boundaries of our music and taking it worldwide.

These bands fused the Punjabi village's rural sounds with the Western world's modernity, creating a hybrid that prevented Western-born Punjabis like me from becoming wayward. They kept us connected to our roots.

The vocalists for the bands mentioned above (Channi Singh, Premi Johal, Shin, Kulwant Bhamrah, Sardara Gill, and Malkit Singh) will all be performing at The Forum in Birmingham on November 23.

A dear friend—and fellow die-hard Bhangra fan—and I joined forces to go to the nexus of British Bhangra, Birmingham, by way of London, to re-experience the sounds of our formative years and initiate our inevitable mid-life crisis. We’re also crossing one of the top items off our bucket list: seeing Shin, one of our favourite singers and the greatest frontman in Bhangra, live.

Shin is extra-special to me, not only because he was the legendary voice on outstanding DCS records like 123 Go, Bhangra’s Gonna Get You, and Punjabi Dance Nation, but also because he empowered me at a tender and vulnerable age.

In Grade 3, I needed glasses, and my parents weren’t happy about it. One of them criticized my looks and referred to me as Gandhi, who isn’t the most popular guy in our circles. And, well, you’d never mistake the Mahatma for a young Roger Moore.

During this time, I was scared, disheartened, and embarrassed about wearing glasses and pretended my vision was okay, even lying during eye exams because of the cruel things that my parents said to me.

But then, a few years later, I saw the bespectacled Shin promoting Punjabi Dance Nation on Vision TV’s Des Pardes, fronting a cutting-edge and youthful band, controlling the mic like a dictator, and oozing confidence.

That moment taught me it was okay to wear glasses. It inspired me to rebel against my parents and wear the most oversized glasses possible as a middle finger to anyone who made me feel ugly and inferior as an eight-year-old.

About three decades after I saw Shin’s life-changing and empowering performance of “Dil Phirbhi Punjabi” on Des Pardes, I’m finally going to see him live, and I can’t wait. But before he drops his iconic “Hanji” to open up his set, I decided to squeeze in a Butter Chicken to officially make my Butter Chicken Odyssey international.

London has many options for Indian dining. I saw quirky names like Dishoom, Gopal’s of Soho, and Colonel Saab before zeroing in on the Michelin-starred Veeraswamy, the United Kingdom’s oldest surviving Indian restaurant. It first opened in 1926 and has remained in the same spot on Regent Street since then.

In its nearly hundred-year history, Veeraswamy, which first offered Anglo-Indian cuisine before adding Punjabi, Goan, and Kashmiri dishes to its menu, has served famous Indian politicians like Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi and likely ruined their London trips and bowels with the most horrifying, poorly made Indian food known to humankind.

Veeraswamy tries to mask its incompetence with expensive, eye-catching floral wallpaper, highly sexualized artwork, opulent chandeliers, a display case of Rajasthani turbans, punkass jazz music, and snooty servers ready to drop well-prepared monologues to hoodwink all their Caucasian customers into thinking they’re eating authentic Indian food when they’re actually eating a daft replica.

Their Butter Chicken gravy has minimal mirch masala and is idiotically tomatoey. It features ugly, fetus-like, gross-tasting chicken breast with the texture of a Michelin tire—it’s so hard and dryer than a U of A philosophy lecture from a pretentious knob.

Fenugreek leaves on top act as a garnish to impress philistines that don’t know any better. It adds nothing to a rubbish Butter Chicken that makes me question the integrity, sanity, education, and racial diversity of the Michelin Guide’s staff, which might be as reliable as Edmonton’s pay-for-play publications that keep championing the same restaurants and restaurateurs every year even though they suck.

After I finished the charlatan-made Butter Chicken at Veeraswamy, their arrogant, spiky-haired manager, who rudely refused to accommodate my friend’s allergies because his restaurant is elitist, lazy, and insensitive, asked me how I felt about the food. I responded, “You don’t want to know my opinion.”

Since the 1950s, the infinite employment opportunities at Southall’s local factories and the nearby Heathrow airport have attracted thousands of South Asians looking for a better life abroad. Sixty-five percent of the current population (about 54,000 people) is of South Asian descent. Twenty-eight percent of the population is Sikh, and there are ten local gurdwaras, including the enormous Gurdwara Sri Singh Sabha, which cost nearly thirty million dollars to make and has the most gigantic portrait of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale I’ve ever seen.

I haven’t been to India since the 1990s, but Southall awakened my long-dormant memories of Ludhiana’s markets. Portraits of my childhood crush Kajol are on every street corner, specialty businesses like Falooda Village and Jalebi Junction are ubiquitous, and seeing a white person is like playing Where’s Waldo.

Growing up, I heard a lot about Southall in Premi and Sukhwinder Singh's songs. I also heard a lot about Birmingham’s Soho Road, immortalized by Apna Sangeet on their second album, Tour India, but Soho Road is nothing like Southall. The latter feels like India; the former has turned into a dystopia reminiscent of Millbourne Mall blended with the worst parts of 118th Avenue.

Southall is also highly influential in the global Punjabi music industry. In 1979, Southall resident Harcharan Channi noticed that the British-born Punjabi youth were losing touch with the motherland’s culture, limiting themselves to British music and movies. In response, he formed the band Alaap and independently released their debut album, Teri Chunni De Sitare. Deepak Khazanchi, our answer to Giorgio Moroder, produced the record, mixing in the pop sounds of Britain and modernizing Bhangra.

Three years later, Alaap clinched worldwide fame with their superior sophomore album Dance with Alaap, featuring the smash hit “Bhabiye Ne Bhabiye.” A year after that, Southall resident and tabla master Kuljit Bhamra teamed up with Premi Johal and Kumar Heera & Palvinder Dhami to produce Premi’s Chammak Jehi Mutiar, released in 1983, and Heera’s Jagh Wala Mela, released in 1984.

Dance with Alaap, Chammak Jehi Mutiar, and Jagh Wala Mela formed the holy trinity of UK Bhangra, significantly altering the trajectory of Punjabi music by influencing the next four decades of singers, musicians, and lyricists. The Kuljit Bhamra-produced records mentioned above were so big that they were once played back-to-back, non-stop, on the local radio station Sunrise. And I even heard “Teri Akh De Ishare,” a track off Jagh Wala Mela, playing from an SUV outside a Southall pub last night—the four lads in the vehicle were all singing the song.

Southall has also had a memorable impact on cinema. Gurinder Chadha, the director of the 2002 cult classic BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM, was raised in Southall and shoots her movies there. DILWALE DULHANIA LE JAYENGE, the most successful Bollywood movie of my time and one of many Yash Raj love letters to Punjabi culture, features scenes in Southall. And during Akshay Kumar’s lucrative exploit-the-Sikh-race phase, he shot PATIALA HOUSE in Southall.

Southall’s impact, legacy, and Punjabi influence are undeniable—even the railway station’s signage is in Gurmukhi.

Haweli, a Pakistani Punjabi restaurant in the west end of Southall, is a fancy, bougie-looking joint. It’s bright and spacious inside, with a marble-mimicking floor, crystal chandeliers, teal and red velvet seating, and decorative panels that look like an oversized Connect Four game. Each table has a bottle of South Downs Natural Mineral Water and expensive and heavy slate-coloured charger plates. The restaurant's chic look clashes with the working-class spirit that turned Southall into a microcosm of Punjab.

The soundtrack features older songs from Bollywood movies like BODYGUARD and GHAJINI and trashy covers of songs from movies like TRIDEV.

The service is excellent. Our tall, soft-spoken, bearded, Lahore-born server, Haroon, was extremely polite. When he asked for the preferred spice level on my Butter Chicken, I confirmed that he was Punjabi, then answered, “Bundh Paar,” which translates into “tear my asshole.” He blushed and tried to hold his laughter, struggling to maintain his composure and professionalism.

I knew the Butter Chicken at Haweli would be terrific because this is Southall, not Picadilly Circus. That Michelin-starred Veeraswamy rubbish can get a pass in a predominantly touristy white crowd, but that stuff wouldn’t fly in Southall. It would fail because Punjabis would see through the restaurant’s holier-than-thou, fugazi garbage immediately and shut the place down.

Haweli’s Butter Chicken costs over twenty pounds less than the deformed monstrosity served at Veeraswamy and is a million times better. It’s available in a desi style for us and an English style for cowards who don’t expand their palates.

The desi-style Butter Chicken features generous chicken breast chunks, almost as soft as tofu, sitting in a caramelized sauce full of cream, green chilli, and more garlic than Carmela Soprano’s kitchen. The chicken is not seasoned in advance or cooked in a tandoor, but it soaks up and transmits the garlicky and green chilli flavours well.

The heat is deceptive—it crawls up gently on you like a ladybug before eventually decimating your bowels sixteen hours later. I learned this the next day in a public washroom at the train station.

I was doing my thing in a stall, letting off more fireworks than Diwali night in Ellerslie. To mask the farts, I hit shuffle on Spotify, and my phone played David Bowie’s “Life on Mars.”

Thirty seconds into the song, the guy in the neighbouring stall started whistling the Hunky Dory melody. I was about to talk to him about Bowie and ask him for his favourite song and album (mine are “Space Oddity” and Let’s Dance), but it was the most awkward environment, and I was embarrassed by the stench I had created. I was also in pain because Haweli took my request for “Bundh Paar” heat literally, making sure I’d never forget my experience in Southall.

Recently, at the mature age of 39, I decided it was time for a change and left the south side, moving west, half an hour away from my beloved Mill Woods.

I still adore Mill Woods—it’s forever a part of my heart, and growing up there was a mostly safe and beautiful experience—but I grew up a few doors away from Molotov cocktails and a few minutes away from drive-by shootings and murders.

Mill Woods forever tainted its reputation with brown-on-brown violence in the early 2000s, and I now fear a resurgence, especially with our federal government’s embrace of thousands of unvetted international students and the consequential rise of dangerous separatist and nationalist movements on Canadian soil.

I don't want to be in an area where racial tension is palpable and the threat of brown-on-brown violence is real. And I don't want my kid to grow up in that environment.

I want my child to grow up in a racially diverse crowd far away from foreign groupthink and have an eclectic array of tolerant friends who belong to different faith groups and have more to offer to a conversation than their theories on who killed Sidhu Moosewala.

Since moving west a few weeks ago, I’ve warmed up to my neighbourhood, but there aren’t many Indian restaurants because the west side isn’t known for its Indian population. While Mill Woods and the neighbouring areas are full of desi restaurants, the west end only has a few, including a joint called Classic Indian Restaurant.

Located next door to a KFC and much better than anything Colonel Sanders ever produced, Classic is a medium-sized place with a seating capacity of about 50. Their booths consist of NWO Wolfpac-coloured, fake leather cushions that are beaten up and duct-taped. The tables are covered with cheap and poorly installed stickers to mimic marble, bubbling up and resembling the album cover for Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures.

Four types of wallpaper cover the restaurant’s walls, including fake brick and a silver York-branded mid-century style product currently available at Rona for $62.99 per roll.

The walls have ornamental mirrors, metal plates, Galactus-sized golden cutlery, and a framed portrait of Chamarajendra Wadiyar X, the twenty-third Maharaja of Mysore.

There’s a small bar featuring a rangoli, with just three stools and wooden seats that are worn out and desperately need a restain. The bar has popular beers like Molson Canadian, Coors, Stella, and the Indian favourite Kingfisher, but there are no local options and nothing on tap. The hard liquor options include Black Label, Jameson, Glenfiddich, and an almost empty bottle of Crown Royal, suggesting Punjabis like to frequent this restaurant.

Above the alcohol options is a flat-screen TV playing cringe-worthy karaoke instrumentals of songs by Mohammed Rafi, Lata Mangeshkar, and Mukesh. An amateur pianist cheapens classics like “Yeh Mera Prem Patra” and “Dost Dost Na Raha” from Raj Kapoor’s landmark 1964 film SANGAM with his lousy skills. I find it highly pretentious when restaurants rely on these cheesy instrumentals for ambience when they should rely on the original songs, which are flawless, timeless, and universally loved.

Although I found a few issues with the decor, I understand that not every restaurant has the biggest budget for a fancy visual presentation like a Calcutta Cricket Club. And the most important things for a restaurant will always be cleanliness (Classic’s washrooms, featuring the faces of a Pammi Bai lookalike and a sardarni at the entrance, are spotless), kind service, and great food. Classic has these three essentials covered.

Their Argento deep-red and slightly charred boneless chicken is cooked in a tandoor for authenticity, giving it a desirable smokiness. It is then further cooked and flavoured in a spicy, tomato and onion-based gravy, smoother than Sade and punctuated by mirch, cilantro, cream, and a chunk of makhan. The gravy is so good that I slurped it up like a bowl of ramen after finishing the chicken, agitating my throat and refusing to waste a drop like Jasmine Sherni.

While I was finishing my 32nd Butter Chicken of the year, the chef came out of the kitchen and kindly asked how my food was, showing confidence and the fact that he cared about his customers and their satisfaction. I was too overwhelmed with the spices and flavours to muster enough words, so I channeled Siskel & Ebert and gave the chef and his restaurant two thumbs up.

In the past, I would’ve been disgusted by this, but I’ve been reading Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People and trying to become more empathetic and likeable.

Also, New Gurkha’s server, Saru, told me that their restaurant’s fanbase is primarily white folks and Punjabis, and the latter would explain the black ass hairs.

As a hairy Punjabi man myself, I understand our lycanthropic plight. We’re hairier than Larry Talbot and shed like a Golden Retriever, so what the hell are we supposed to do? And, at least, it’s not pubic hair on the toilet—I know this because there was no pubic curl present on any of the six hairs mentioned above.

Still, I can see ass hairs being a huge turn-off for most people, especially with New Gurkha already operating out of an unattractive and old building next to the sketchy-looking, run-down, 2-star Derrick motel—I wouldn’t be surprised if they shot low-quality gonzo porn there.

The restaurant’s suspended ceiling tiles are water-damaged, the walls are a Simpsons-yellow and ugly burgundy, and the booths are pumpkin-orange and turd-brown, resulting in a joint that looks like a leftover set from Three’s Company.

There are also tacky, flashing green lights highlighting the decent liquor selection, which includes the almighty Jägermeister. And if you’re not in the mood for stiff drinks, they have Coke, Fanta, Sprite, and 7 Up.

Near the entrance, there’s a large glass display case of miniature Thai-looking idols resembling props from the Sagat stage in Street Fighter II. There are even cool bronze Muay Thai fighter statues, which I'd love to own but are strangely out of place at an Indian restaurant. Maybe the chef loves JCVD’s KICKBOXER and its Bollywood remake, JIGAR. Or perhaps he’s a student of local kickboxing legend Frank Lee.

The soundtrack is wack modern Bollywood music, which plagues most Indian restaurants not run by Punjabis. I sound like my dad’s broken Chamkila records and keep repeating myself, but Bollywood music sucks now, and it jumped the shark in 2009 after A.R. Rahman peaked with an Oscar win and his fantastic Delhi-6 soundtrack.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to spend much time listening to New Gurkha’s dreadful playlist, which makes Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music sound like Brahms’ Lullaby, because the Butter Chicken took fast-food speed to make. I wouldn’t be surprised if Barry Allen is moonlighting as the chef at this restaurant.

Five minutes is never enough time to make good Butter Chicken. However, in less than five minutes, Saru brought out better-than-good, fresh Butter Chicken loaded with big, boneless, and juicy pieces of proper desi-style chicken tikka, covered with masala and reddened like Tandoori Chicken.

The gravy was full of gnarly green chillies—the chef made it rain green like a money shot from the Incredible Hulk—and it was extremely hot. The stuff was so spicy that it penetrated my dermatitis-riddled hands, piercing the webbing between my fingers and causing slight pain.

I also think there’s a possibility that New Gurkha added red dye to get the traditional colours right, making their Butter Chicken look better, but also staining my hands, lips, and tongue, making it look like I had a sexual encounter with the Human Torch.

Saru, who wasn’t too talkative at first, eventually became chatty in a good way, answering all my questions during and after my meal. She told me about a second New Gurkha location on Ellwood Drive, focusing more on Indo-Chinese cuisine. She also offered me a free side of onions, but that would’ve ruined everything because onions are nasty.

I asked Saru what language she spoke—I overheard her speaking a language uncommon to my ears with the chef—and she told me she was Nepalese, opening up the perfect opportunity for me to talk about my favourite Bollywood singer, the Nepalese Udit Narayan. I could’ve also talked about my childhood crush, the Nepalese Manisha Koirala. But I doubt Saru wanted to know about the many times I pleasured myself watching Manisha’s item number in CHHUPA RUSTAM.

I’m a 39-year-old father of a toddler, so I don’t get out much, but I made the exception for one of my favourite emcees. I’ve been a Kool Keith fan since I first saw his unforgettable Black Elvis music video on MuchMusic in 1999. He blended the worlds of boom bap, science fiction, and hardcore pornography like no other rapper, and his two magnum opuses, Critical Beatdown and Dr. Octagonecologyst, are among the most innovative and brilliant hip hop albums.

The venue for Kool Keith’s concert was Double Dragon, a nightclub next to the retro technology-themed and kung fu movie-loving restaurant, Fu’s Repair Shop. Both spots share a fantastic cocktail menu featuring a spiked Mango Lassi.

Since I rarely go out now, I need to make sure each outing counts, so I knew a night at Double Dragon meant binge drinking was inevitable, and that’s never a good idea on an empty stomach, especially a middle-aged empty stomach.

So, before making the trek downtown, I went to the Callingwood neighbourhood for an early Butter Chicken dinner at their Indian restaurant Curry Spoon, a tiny hole-in-the-wall with a seating capacity of about 25.

I found bright-white brick walls staring at me inside the joint, with olive green dining chairs and a large, wall-spanning photograph of lal mirch, dalchini, lassan, and other popular Indian ingredients. I also saw some septuagenarian white people. There were no desi customers, which is usually not a good sign for an Indian restaurant’s food, but I expect things like this at a joint called Curry Spoon.

The word “curry” in a restaurant’s name simultaneously acts as a dog whistle for older white people and a repellent for the Indian crowd. We rarely use the word “curry” in our day-to-day conversations. It’s more of a lazy, colonial-minded white person's word to generalize all the vindaloos, kormas, and bhunas under one easy-to-pronounce, all-encompassing name.

Curry Spoon has six shelves full of random junk near its front counter, including flowers, sweet boxes, pots, and cinnamon sticks. Store-bought packets of Haldiram-branded Bhel Puri and Moong Dal are also on display, which makes me wonder if Curry Spoon is making things from scratch in-house.

Next to the shelves is a wall full of mirrors for the vain, especially the senescence-fearing uncles and aunties who still dye their hair black weekly, and the self-conscious and insecure, like me, who don’t want to leave a restaurant with a beard stained Butter Chicken orange.

Curry Spoon plays the most grating English music off YouTube. I heard several unknown wannabe dream pop acts that required my Shazam button for identification. One of the acts was Drove, a Dutch group that will probably never crack a million monthly plays on Spotify because nobody cares about their saccharine soundscapes and pedestrian lyrics (they have less followers than me on Facebook, and I suck). Between the annoying songs are ads for Oral-B because Curry Spoon refuses to pay for a YouTube premium membership.

The restaurant has only a few tables, and they’re all covered with white postal wrap paper—an unforgivable eyesore. I’m assuming it’s a safety measure to keep the white tablecloths underneath the postal wrap paper stain-free. Still, it makes the restaurant look silly and cheap and makes for an uncomfortable dining experience. Nobody wants to eat Butter Chicken on postal wrap paper.

Also, the server only gave me two napkins to last the entire dining experience, inevitably resulting in a big mess all over my hands and the paper mentioned above, which started to resemble shit-stained Charmin Ultra Softs. I prefer bottomless napkin dispensers like the ones at Pakwan, especially when I’m paying a rapacious restaurant $20.99 for a bad Butter Chicken.

Curry Spoon advertises the word “tandoor” on their exterior, but their pathetic chicken breast doesn’t come within ten feet of their clay oven—if they even have one. The fat, unsavoury, rubber-like chicken cubes have no seasoning on them. They aren’t even tenderized with yogurt, resulting in a chicken dryer than a dandruff-prone scalp. There’s no hari mirch, turmeric, coriander, garam masala, or anything. It’s naked like Mr. Chow in the car trunk, waiting to expose his little lully.

The gravy is also deplorable. It’s incredibly tomatoey, like a Mary Bailey publication, and has less spice than the microwaveable Butter Chicken from Nisku’s Bombay Chef, available for $5.49 at Superstore. That’s $15 less than this trash from Curry Spoon. Sure, restaurant meals cost more because they should give you “professionally made” food, good customer service, and a pleasant ambience; however, dinner at Curry Spoon is one notch above a cold night alone and naked on the streets of a rough neighbourhood.

Curry Spoon can’t even get their Garlic Naan right. It’s a weird, dull colour, unbuttered and hardened beyond reason, with less garlic than Nosferatu’s diet.

I was on a roll with three great Butter Chickens in a row: one in Southall, London; one in West Edmonton; and one in a restaurant next to a sketchy-looking motel where Ian Gainer murdered a poor sex worker five years ago. But then, Curry Spoon happened, messed everything up, and would’ve ruined my evening—if I didn’t have Double Dragon’s cocktails and Kool Keith’s rhymes waiting for me downtown.

Although this is normal behaviour for me—I’m known as the guy who adds washroom inspections to restaurant reviews—my three-year-old daughter finds it strange and asks, “Daddy, why are you taking photos of the toilet?”

I answer, “Because there are pee-pee drops all over it.”

My daughter now sees them—fresh, abundant, and hard to miss—and is grossed out and refuses to use the toilet. I tell her it’s mandatory or else she’ll have an accident. So I resort to awkwardly holding her 35-pound body mid-air, exhausting my tricep muscles and letting her pee without her butt touching the urine-covered toilet seat.

A few minutes later, we’re in one of the restaurant’s eight wine-coloured booths, surrounded by older white people, including one gentleman on the doorstep of senility—he doesn’t know how to use his debit card to pay the bill, and his noticeable tremor suggests he might be responsible for the mess in the washroom. I won’t hold a grudge against him because I’m not evil, and aging is hard and unfair, and it’s not his fault his aim in the washroom is worse than Shaq’s aim on the free throw line.

More older white customers walk in. None of them can pronounce the dish names correctly. One lady has a striking Bride of Frankenstein white streak in her hair and demands mild heat on her Palak Paneer. She sounds mean, like my deeply-wrinkled, hamster-obsessed Grade 4 teacher, Ms. Kerr.

I don't see any desi customers other than my daughter and me, which makes me realize I’ve made a mistake by coming to Green Beans. But it’s too late to walk out now—I’ve already ordered their Butter Chicken.

The wait time for my food is about 10 minutes. My daughter watches Ms. Rachel on my iPhone to pass the time while I dissect the restaurant’s mediocre decor. A long, ugly chartreuse bulkhead is awkwardly attached to suspended ceiling tiles to hang light fixtures. About fifteen small paintings by one artist hang on the walls. They show flowers, mountains, and two white-haired women who could pass for Lillian Gish and Bette Davis in THE WHALES OF AUGUST. None of the paintings impress me. They’re okay for an amateur painter, but they’ll never find a spot in a reputable European art gallery. They’re sloppy, childish, and derivative, with dull colours, offering nothing fresh to the world.

The restaurant’s playlist consists of last decade’s Punjabi hits. Sadly, it’s a poorly-made mix from an incompetent bedroom DJ who tarnishes much-loved songs like “Laung Laachi,” “Daru Badnaam,” and “Sip Sip” with stupid, out-of-sync, post-production drum sounds.

Green Beans is licensed and has Glenfiddich, Crown Royal, Black Label and Patron. They also have the holy trinity of hillbilly beers: Kokanee, Budweiser, and Molson Canadian. Soft drinks include Sprite, Canada Dry, Mug Root Beer, and three flavours of Jarritos (Mango, Lime, and Mandarin). I don’t see any Coke or Pepsi.

A deep Google dive shows that the restaurant once specialized in soups, salads, and sandwiches before a change to desi ownership brought Indian and Nepalese dishes to the menu. They still have some of the old sandwiches, including a Cubano, two types of BLTs, and the Jamaican Chicken Voodoo—a hella racist name that deserves the wrath of Papa Shango.

My Butter Chicken arrives. I can smell the suck on it.

Even though the restaurant is in front of the Telus World of Science, they haven’t mastered the Butter Chicken sciences. They create a philistine product aimed at their Golden Girls demographic, the type of people who hated Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl performance and said they couldn’t understand him. Maybe it’s a generational gap. Maybe it’s a cultural gap. Maybe it’s time to put the Skynyrd records down and make some non-white friends. If you can understand Bob Dylan’s mumbling, you should be able to understand Kendrick Lamar’s poetry.

As mentioned earlier, I can smell the suck on Green Beans’s Butter Chicken; the stench of pre-made, old gravy and stale chicken breast is unmistakable.

The grotesque gravy is lukewarm, extremely tomatoey, and almost solidified, with a little, skinny circle of cream, stringy fenugreek, and fat, jarring chunks of garlic. The restaurant dumps hari mirch for extra heat after the gravy is already hours old, but it doesn’t work and worsens things. The mirch isn’t part of the original harmony; it’s out of tune like Cinderella’s stepsisters, resulting in an incongruous foundation for the tougher-than-a-Denny's-steak chicken breast.

It’s hard for me to fault Green Beans. Their older clientele appears uncultured and unintegrated and probably wants bland food. If the restaurant moves to an area like Tipaskan or Minchau in Mill Woods, it might result in more diverse customers and flavourful dishes. But I guess residents in neighbourhoods near the Telus World of Science are built differently and enjoy watered-down Indian food that fails to stimulate the tastebuds, soul, and chittarhole.

It’s a restaurant deep in the soul of Mill Woods, my old stomping grounds, across the street from Mill Woods Town Centre, where I spent my youth loitering and gawking at penis-shaped lamps and nudie posters at San Francisco, playing X-Men at Wizard’s Castle, and buying DMX albums from HMV.

With all these memories and nostalgia on my mind, I wanted to fall truly, madly, and deeply in love with Garlic & Greens.

It’s a fancy spot, antithetical to the grit and run-down feel of most of Mill Woods’s working-class neighbourhoods. I didn’t expect stone-panelled and gold-tiled walls, abstract art, iron lanterns, and serpentine chandeliers from Mill Woods, but that’s what I saw at Garlic & Greens. What I’m used to in Mill Woods is orange and saag-coloured shag carpets, ugly 70s linoleum, exposed and rusty basement beams, and Sohni Mahiwal portraits. Garlic & Greens challenges these dated features with its chic decor.

The restaurant has several green booths with slightly torn cushions and three seats at the bar for Jack, Janet, and Chrissy. Behind the bar are shelves full of bottles that have “Talli Tuesday” written all over them, including Crown Royal, Glenfiddich, and Chivas Regal, which has been enjoying more notoriety lately after Diljit name-dropped it on “Khutti.” There are also cans of Limca and Thums Up on the shelves; the latter feature black-and-blue photos of our demigod, Shah Rukh Khan.

Two TVs (one hanging from the ceiling, the other attached to a wall) play newer Bollywood and Punjabi songs. Bollywood songs include “Pehle Bhi Main” from the brilliant ANIMAL soundtrack. Punjabi songs include a dreamy mashup of AP Dhillon’s “Insane” and Shubh’s “You and Me,” set to the visuals of Sonam Bajwa, who sure is easy on the eyes—even with the lip and cheek filler. However, I wasn’t at Garlic & Greens to lust over Punjwood starlets. I’m a militant monogamist and don’t crush on younger girls, and I don’t conclude my nights with Karlee Grey videos.

I was at Garlic & Greens for one thing: Butter Chicken. While I was waiting for the young, mop-haired server to bring out my dish, I took a piss break in a washroom that smelled like old fish and John Wayne Gacy’s crawlspace. There were duct-taped former glory holes in the wall, and the stinky janitorial equipment was so close to the toilet that it could hold your lully for you.

The Butter Chicken arrived in a large, white bowl containing more meat than the previous Odyssey offerings. But that didn’t mean much because these big chicken pieces were the same old, unseasoned things that have plagued my quest from day one. They overcrowded the bowl like an Annabelle Chong gangbang, refusing to let the gravy have any impact and holding it back like desi parents hold their children back from accomplishing their dreams when they want to become something other than a doctor, lawyer, or engineer.

After going through three yellowed, extra-hard garlic naans to finish all the big chicken pieces, the gravy finally had its solo performance and won me over. It took some time to warm up like Stuart Skinner after letting in the first shot on net, but it was a beautiful slow burn, smooth, nuanced, and multi-flavoured with visible cilantro, fenugreek, and mirch.

Although most of the chicken was gone, several niblets remained, small enough to absorb the many intricacies of the gravy’s masala. These leftover niblets and the excellent gravy helped transform Garlic & Greens from mediocre and forgettable into a winner, making me proud as a 30-year Mill Woods resident.

It’s redder than Jessica Chastain’s hair, and I know exactly who to blame: Kathmandu Rasoi’s Butter Chicken. The only other thing I ate last night was Froot Loops—and let’s be real, Toucan Sam has never made my chittar explode.

Butthole trauma is a recurring theme in my writing. I still find potty humour funny, and I’ve been a lifelong masochist. But masochism requires some pleasure. Kathmandu Rasoi’s Butter Chicken gave me none. The diarrhea hit hard and fast, like an RKO outta nowhere.

The gravy is crowned with evil green chillies—longer and thicker than John Lennon’s lully on the Two Virgins album cover. They’re not diced or blended. They just sit there like a hostile garnish, completely disconnected from the chicken and gravy. The chicken, while tender and seemingly well-marinated, is flaccid in flavour. The gravy is aggressively tomato-forward, resembling a 1962 Andy Warhol exhibit—minus the talent. The only other discernible flavour is the pain from those chillies.

Kathmandu Rasoi came highly recommended by several people. I have no idea why. Maybe it’s a La Perle and Summerlea thing. Maybe it’s for folks who think The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel was the height of cultural experience. However, it’s not for people like me—people who can spot fenugreek in their turds and know that Kathmandu Rasoi’s Butter Chicken is faker than the diamonds in a dollar store necklace.

The restaurant is filthy. Two of the ceiling vents are coated in black grime. And I’m not sure if shit can evaporate and stain walls, but the white one next to the men’s toilet is stained with doo-doo brown streaks and looks like a brown-and-white zebra.

The decor is unlikeable: dated pumpkin-orange booths, light fixtures that look like the Tin Man’s head got tangled in a paper clip sculpture, and a wallpaper mural covered in what I initially thought were Hanumans. Turns out, they were centaurs. I asked the servers where it came from—they had no clue. Probably a leftover from a previous tenant. Thai, maybe?

The service was rough. A poor old white customer came in, stood awkwardly at the front for several minutes, and was ignored the entire time while the staff had an extended, animated conversation in Nepalese—it lasted longer than a conversation between Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke. The poor old white customer eventually left without being acknowledged once. He probably went home and cursed Nepal.

As for me, I was handed one napkin with my Butter Chicken. One. That’s like giving someone a single tissue to wipe their ass when they have diarrhea. They should’ve handed me an entire roll of Charmin Ultra Softs to deal with all the shit that beatboxed its way out of my anus the next day.

I don’t know if some of my readers are messing with me and recommending Kathmandu Rasoi as a joke. But I take this Odyssey seriously. It’s about finding great food, reconnecting with my culture, and celebrating it. It’s not about making my chittar explode. I wouldn’t be surprised if I have an anal fissure now.

I visited a few weeks ago. As I walked in, I heard familiar Hindu bhajans—reminding me of the few times I’d been to the old Hindu Society of Alberta mandir, the one that recently caught fire.

I’ve never heard bhajans at a restaurant. Maybe the lone server is a devout Hindu who makes annual pilgrimages to bathe in the Ganges and wash away sins. I don’t know. I’m not a religious man.

To me, dead is dead. I don’t even want religious music at my funeral—especially that Jagjit Singh simran that soundtracks every Sikh send-off at Hainstock’s Funeral Home. I think my mom has PTSD from it. I want Danny Elfman’s “Ice Dance” from Edward Scissorhands playing instead. That movie taught me about aging and death in my Sakaw apartment in 1991—and that instrumental is beautiful.

I’ve been thinking about death a lot lately. I turn 40 next month. I just saw The Monkey, a Stephen King adaptation with the tagline: “Everybody dies. And that’s fucked up.” And it is. So fucked up. It makes no sense. Why?

I don’t want to die. Hell, I don’t even want to turn 40. I want to turn 30 again. Or 25. I’m older now than everyone I admired: Pac, BIG, Cobain, Bruce Lee, Jesus. In 25 years, I’ll be an old man. That’s nothing. I remember 25 years ago like it was last week—Austin vs. McMahon, Jerry Springer, J.Lo’s “Waiting for Tonight” music video.

I wasn’t really touched by death until two years ago. One of my dearest, oldest friends—Jas—passed. And it hit hard. I still bawl thinking about him—the fact that I’ll never speak to him again.

He was only 32. So much life left. To make it worse, he had terminal cancer and fought it in silence, like a warrior. I never even knew.

While watching The Monkey, I found myself thinking about Jas and his death—not because of the movie’s tagline; I only learned about that later. It was the movie’s opening song: “Do Lafzon Ki Hai Dil Ki Kahani,” from The Great Gambler, a 1979 clusterfuck starring Amitabh Bachchan in a double role. A movie only Jas seemed to love.

It’s a convoluted mess with a storyline no one could follow, and the most offensive use of blackface since Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer. But it had its moments: Prem Chopra dancing to KC and the Sunshine Band, Zeenat Aman in her spiciest outfits—she never looked better. Jas adored that movie. And he loved that song. After he died, I got access to his Spotify. “Do Lafzon Ki Hai Dil Ki Kahani” was his most-played Bollywood track. He loved 70s Bollywood. Just like me.

English movies have opened with Hindi songs before—“Jaan Pehechan Ho” in Ghost World, “Chaiyya Chaiyya” in Inside Man—but The Great Gambler? That’s a strange choice. It wasn’t even a box office hit. I’ve never heard anyone talk about it—other than Jas.

I don’t believe in an afterlife, but hearing that song in The Monkey messed with me. What if he’s trying to speak to me? But that’s stupid, right? He couldn’t pull strings on a Stephen King movie. Where’s the logic in that?

Later in the day, after watching The Monkey, I hit shuffle on my 4,000-song family friendly playlist on Spotify—my three-year-old daughter was nearby—and the first song to play was Didar Sandhu’s “Na Maar Zalma Ve,” Jas’s favourite Punjabi song. Again, I didn’t think much of it. I’m skeptical and believe in science.

But then something bizarre happened at Junoon, just a day later. After the morning bhajans stopped, a new playlist started—nothing but 70s Bollywood songs, mostly sung by Kishore Kumar, my favourite singer of all time. This hasn’t happened at any of the 37 desi restaurants I’ve visited during the Odyssey—except my second visit to Masala Tree, but I’m confident they played all Kishore because they knew I was coming and knew about my love for him. They even played my favourite songs.

At Junoon, classics like “Rote Hue Aate Hai Sab” and “Dil Kya Kare”—from box office hits Muqaddar Ka Sikander and Julie, respectively—played. And then, suddenly, I heard some Italian-sounding music (The Great Gambler was shot in Rome and Venice), followed by the unmistakable vocals of Asha Bhosle on “Do Lafzon Ki Hai Dil Ki Kahani.” It was a strange and eerie coincidence—and I’m still skeptical. I don’t have any illusions surrounding death. But I had a brief moment of comfort at Junoon, hearing Jas’s favourite Bollywood song, thinking he was trolling me with The Great Gambler. It’s not divine intervention, but life is hard and death is cruel, unfair, and so final. Some people find comfort in religion; others in therapy. I find it in 1970s Bollywood and deluding myself with the thought that Jas was controlling the playlist and telling me he’s okay. That he’s safe.

He was the only Punjabi guy I knew around my age who loved 1970s Bollywood. And we both got our filmi love from our fathers. His dad was a Rajesh Khanna guy; mine an Amitabh believer. His dad watched Aradhana three times in one night when it was released; mine skipped school to watch Deewaar. A little age gap between them decided whether they pledged allegiance to Kaka or the Big B. Rajesh ruled the early 70s, but then Hindi cinema got grittier with Salim–Javed’s screenplays—and Rajesh, a paunchy, cute, acne-riddled Amritsari boy, wasn’t right for the Angry Young Man archetype that the rugged, darker, leaner Amitabh Bachchan perfectly embodied.

But enough of my Bollywood digression. Please excuse me—after Jas’s passing, I don’t really have anyone to discuss 70s Bollywood with.

At Junoon, the ultra-cool 70s playlist was eventually marred by repeating the same song—“O Mere Dil Ke Chain”—three times: the original version, a Sonu Nigam imitator, and a porno sax instrumental.

Still, I got my 70s fix, and Junoon is one of the finest Indian restaurants in Edmonton. A stylish, modern, and spotless joint with a black, gold, silver, beige, and olive green colour scheme. An opulent chandelier anchors the space—it’s the centrepiece of a gorgeously designed restaurant, featuring comfy green velvet booths and a lounge area with black velvet couches, green cushions, and glossy black coffee tables. It oozes class and elegance—I felt underdressed and uncouth in my Degrassi hoodie, ordering a Sprite (Junoon offers two free refills, which is unheard of generosity at desi restaurants).

The owner has a background in jewelry design, and it shows. She doesn’t veer into gaudiness or exotica like many Indian restaurants; the sophistication is subtle, understated, and appreciated. I wish I could go back in time and hire her to do the decor for my wedding—the lady who did it, Kulkarni, was shadier than Don King and didn’t do the best job.

Also, the bar is a dream. I’m talking black and gold, with a circular mirror in the middle, surrounded by meticulously arranged bottles of everything you can think of: Glenlivet, Baileys, Black Label, Jameson, Maker’s Mark. It’s all here.

I was afraid the restaurant was too good to be true and the food would be the flaw—I was wrong. Junoon’s Butter Chicken—and even its skinny cilantro-covered naan—are perfect. And beautiful. Not ugly-delicious. Just beautiful and delicious. Pretty enough to appear in a Ghibli movie without a filter.

Reddish, deep orange gravy, hotter than Jane Fonda’s fitness tapes from the 1980s (the only reason I still have a VCR). Spiral cream drizzle. Fenugreek sprinkles. Butter dissolving precisely in the middle. Smoked chicken tikka. This was a masterpiece. I felt guilty eating it, like I was vandalizing a Caravaggio in the Uffizi Gallery.

I tried to make out the Junoon spices and herbs—I detected black pepper, cilantro, fenugreek, and possibly hari mirch, coming together like Krayzie, Layzie, Bizzy, and Wish for perfect harmony. But I might be mistaken. The owner told me the restaurant’s “in-house spice blends are roasted and ground fresh in the kitchen.” She also said her vision “is to present Indian cuisine in a more elevated and contemporary light, to showcase that it’s far more than the stereotypical Butter Chicken narrative.” If that’s the case, it sounds like Butter Chicken is the neglected stepchild on the menu—but it’s still phenomenal. Makes you wonder how good the rest of the menu is.

As I left the restaurant, I was still tasting the gravy—felt a little cardamom on my tongue—and had the sudden urge to call Jas and tell him about Junoon, and hearing “Do Lafzon Ki Hai Dil Ki Kahani.” But then I remembered: I’ll never speak to him again.

I can’t call him, but I can tell you about him. About his favourite song. And how, through stories—his passions, his life—my friend still lives in my mind.

It’s been around for a few years now, which surprises me—because that spot is cursed. Restaurants die there. Aashiana came and went. So did a bunch of others I can’t even name. Back in 2003, it was Punjab Sweet House. I remember because that’s where I had my 18th birthday party. I didn’t have many friends then, and I’ve never cared much for most of my extended family, but I still remember having fun and doing drunk Bhangra to Sarbjit Cheema, Manmohan Waris, and Kuldip Manak. And Babbu Maan—his album Saun Di Jhadi was my heartbreak therapy in those days.

Sadly, Punjab Chaat House doesn’t play any music. The only sound I heard last Friday during lunch was their corner flatscreen blaring cricket highlights. I don’t like cricket. Haven’t cared since Bhuvan and his misfits beat the British in Lagaan. And honestly, it pisses me off that they’re showing cricket while the Oilers are this deep in the playoffs. If you’re gonna show sports, show hockey. Show Skinner’s shutouts. Show his redemption. Show this city’s goddamn heartbeat.

Punjab Chaat House looks nothing like I remember. The dance floor’s gone. So is the giant poster of Madhuri Dixit—early 90s, green sari, exposed navel. I’ve had a crush on Madhuri since the late 80s, and I’ll be honest—the amount of bodily fluids I’ve spilled over “Dhak Dhak Karne Laga Hai” could repopulate Leduc after the apocalypse.

The restaurant is butt-ugly. Orange walls that look like a thousand bags of Cheetos exploded. Red pendant lights everywhere. Poorly drawn, crooked orange diamonds on a white wall. Dollar store lights on another. Plastic flowers. Fake butterflies. A fake brick wall. Worn-out black leatherette chairs. Faux-marble tables. And a portrait of two geriatric white guys that has shit-all to do with Punjab. It looks like Roy Lichtenstein threw up at the Spice Centre.

A mirror with a Coogi sweater–style frame leads to a filthy washroom. No pubes on the toilet, but the stench of penis and piss is overpowering. The light switch is coated in more grime than a coal miner in Kaala Patthar.

Still, the food ain’t bad. The naan has burnt tips, cilantro flecks, chopped garlic, and glistens with butter. The Butter Chicken is cheap, which explains the low meat count—just three softened, bulky nuggets—but it tastes good. The gravy is orange-red, thick, and fiery, with visible hari mirch, served in a brass karahi. It hits your throat fast and starts testing your pain threshold on the way out. It’s a solid Butter Chicken, but the portion is stingy. And when you compare it to the spicy, creamy infinity of meat in Masala Tree’s Butter Chicken, Punjab Chaat House’s version starts to feel pointless.

After leaving the restaurant, I walked around the strip mall, checking out the current businesses and remembering the long-gone A-Class Spice Bazaar—an Indian grocery/video store that opened back in 2001. Realtor Nam Kular used to work there. He was the reason the place had so many Bollywood classics: Roti Kapada Aur Makaan, Don, Namak Halaal, Satte Pe Satta. He turned that dusty white DVD shelf into a shrine to Zeenat, Parveen, and Hema.

For my 18th birthday, I asked him to order me a bunch of Feroz Khan films: Apradh, Dharmatma, Qurbani, Janbaaz, Yalgaar, and Dayavan—featuring Madhuri’s only sex scene, and the first movie I ever remember watching. I saw it in our first home, in the Menisa neighbourhood, just 5 minutes away from Punjab Chaat House.

With about 25 minutes left in my lunch break, I figured I’d kill some time and swing by my old neighbourhood—to check out my childhood home.

976 Knottwood Road.

I often think about this modest two-storey half-duplex with taupe siding and a strip of brick along the bottom. According to Honest Door, it’s valued at $326,800. 935 square feet. Four bedrooms (I remember three). Two baths. Built in 1977. From 1987 to 1990, I lived there with my mom and dad.

I wonder what it looks like inside now. I remember what it looked like 35 years ago: orange shag carpet, puke-green linoleum in the kitchen, tree-lined wallpaper with Sobha Singh’s Sohni Mahiwal proudly on display. An unfinished basement—with exposed rusty beams—where my parents celebrated birthdays and anniversaries, dancing their youthful hearts out to Premi, Heera, and Golden Star. They danced like time would wait for them.

I think I’m in the thick of a midlife crisis. I miss when death felt distant—for my parents and for me. They’re in the winter of their lives now; I’m settling into autumn. Death isn’t abstract anymore. The greys, the lines, the slow decay—they remind me every day that I’m going to die. It’s tough. No more youth. No more thick black hair. No more loitering outside 7-Eleven with a Slurpee. No more egging the neighbour’s house while his mom enjoys a rare moment of peace on the patio.

I think this midlife crisis—and the fact that I turn 40 in a few days—is what keeps pulling me back to 976 Knottwood Road. I’ve had other homes—Sakaw, Pollard Meadows, Ellerslie—but the one in Menisa made me. That house isn’t just part of my past; it’s my phantom limb. I still feel it, even though it’s long gone.

It’s where I first saw Tim Burton’s Batman—my parents went from videostore to videostore trying to find a copy for me. It’s where I’d watch Pee-Wee’s Playhouse and The Hilarious House of Frightenstein—if I woke up early enough on Saturdays—while my mom was at her janitorial job and my dad was in the kitchen, cooking me fish sticks, blasting Sardool Sikander and Amar Noorie on his silver Hitachi boombox, or talking to some Sahabana rando on the phone. After the shows ended, he’d put on the same VHS for me every weekend—it had both The Karate Kid Part II and The Golden Child on it.

976 Knottwood Road is also where I first watched professional wrestling—one of the great loves of my life. It was February 3, 1989. My family friend Rob had hockey practice, so his dad, Baldev Uncle, asked my dad to record wrestling for him. That meant I couldn’t watch my usual Karate Kid/Golden Child tape for the hundredth time. So I was stuck with wrestling. The Twin Towers vs. The Mega Powers. Miss Elizabeth takes a nasty bump. Hulk Hogan abandons Macho Man in the ring to carry her to the back. Macho snaps and beats the shit out of Hogan. The Mega Powers explode at WrestleMania V. I was hooked and never looked back.

I miss those days. With my parents. There was love, safety—no existential crises, no thoughts of death. Though ironically, it’s where I first learned about death—when Madhuri Dixit got gunned down by her husband’s enemies in Dayavan. I probably shouldn’t have seen that at such a young age. But I’d already seen a lot of violence by then. And a lot of horror. My mom would walk me to the neighbourhood videostore to rent movies like Vamp, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Graveyard Shift—to help her learn English. Monsters, death, and fear are universal. You don’t need English fluency to feel those things. That’s how my mom and I learned the language—together.

God, I miss those days. But they’ll always live in my mind and heart—and whenever I’m back in Mill Woods for a Butter Chicken, I can be like Professor Borg in Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries, visiting all my childhood spots, including 976 Knottwood Road, and replaying the stories that made me.

This was before I even tried their Butter Chicken. I’ve been shitting a lot lately—thanks to Oilers playoff anxiety. I probably inherited the anxiety shits from my Nani, along with my thanatophobia. She wasn’t good for much else—she skipped my wedding with a fake illness, then flew to India the next week.

This playoff anxiety is devouring me. I’m letting the Oilers dictate my mental health. I don’t worship the players, but I need them to win. It’s not just about a team. It’s about our city. It’s about 35 years of disappointment. I don’t remember the dynasty. I don’t remember a single Cup. But I’ve spent my whole life here. Edmonton is all I know. This city deserves a Cup. No one loves their hockey team like we do. But I can feel Tkachuk and the Florida Panthers licking their lips—ready to break our hearts again. And my mental health can’t take another Finals defeat. I still haven’t gotten over last year—or 2006.

Even though the playoffs have me shitting constantly, I’m pretty sure Masala Wok’s toilet was already broken. My dumps weren’t anaconda-sized—just sad little turds that needed way too much wiping. So unfortunately, a bunch of shit-smeared toilet paper was left unflushed. I was the only customer, so I’m sure Masala Wok’s polite server—Amrit, a Saini Surinder lookalike—walked in, saw the disaster, and now thinks I’m a savage. That makes me feel bad. I should’ve told him Sergei Bobrovsky and Brad Marchand were responsible—but would he understand? I’m a neurotic mess. I doubt other food personalities do these things. I can’t imagine The Tomato’s Editor in Chief destroying a restaurant’s toilet during the lunch hour. That’s probably not her jam.

But I doubt she ever frequents the restaurants on 34th Avenue. Local food personalities rarely show Little India any love. But for us so-called first-generation Indo-Canadians (a term I hate—it strips our parents of their Canadian identity), 34th is sacred. We all grew up here.

Recently, arson damaged many businesses on 34th. It felt like an uppercut to our local diaspora. We have core memories rooted here. We got our wedding jewellery from Lalit Uncle and Jyotsnaben Auntie at Sundeep Jewellers. We bought groceries, Bollywood movies, and Bhangra albums from Amritpal Uncle’s Spice Centre—I still remember picking up Jazzy B’s Folk ‘N’ Funky and Sardool Sikander’s Tor Punjaban Dee thirty years ago. Little India kept us tied to the motherland. It kept us from becoming coconuts who can’t pronounce their own names—or worse, anglicize them.

34th Avenue is also home to Hainstock’s Funeral Home, where every local desi gets cremated. It looks like a palatial residence—when my sister was a kid, she told my dad she wanted a house like that. Right now, they have a “Go Oilers Go” sign up, but I can’t think about a potential sixth Stanley Cup when I see Hainstock’s. The only thing I think of is death—and all the loved ones I’ve seen go into their oven, giving them one final touch, one final caress before they disappear forever (all of this trauma soundtracked by Jagjit Singh’s simran—I hate hearing that thing). I don’t like looking at Hainstock’s and thinking about my mortality. It should be in some rural, isolated area, not next to car dealerships and all the desi restaurants on 34th Avenue, including Pakwan, Chutney, and Masala Wok.

Masala Wok was first opened in 2006—if I remember correctly—by an old Bengali high school acquaintance of mine and her family. She changed the spelling of her name—possibly due to numerology—and tried to crack Bollywood. She was photogenic enough, with striking Rekha-esque eyes, but I have no idea whether she could act—and Karan Johar’s brand of nepotism will crush your dreams.

Now the restaurant is owned by Richa Vashisht. I’ve never met her—but I once knew her father, Inderjit Vashisht. He used to serve samosas and chai at the Garneau Theatre during Sunday screenings curated by the Edmonton Movie Club (EMC)—a crew of South Indians devoted to regional Indian films. I used to work at the theatre as a front of house manager during this time, and I hated working EMC screenings. I found the crowd obnoxious and entitled. Most of them were philistines who couldn’t name a Satyajit Ray movie. And they were unclean—leaving a mess on par with a Rocky Horror screening. They also made the theatre smell like incense and body odour. I remember one patron in the bathroom stall next to me—I was taking a mental health break on the toilet from these desis and their shenanigans—and he was pissing with full force like a garden hose, then started tapping his penis like Morse code for 30 seconds to make sure it was dry. It was so gross. That sums up how I felt about EMC and their patrons—I never once sensed a genuine passion for Indian cinema from them.

In this uncouth crowd, Inderjit uncle was the anomaly—kind, humble, well-dressed, and proudly Punjabi. We got along well—he’d tell me about his coming of age in India and his childhood memories of the 1971 Indo-Pak war, recalling classroom drills to keep students safe from Pakistan’s air raids. We also talked about Reginald Dyer and Michael O’Dwyer—and which one Udham Singh assassinated in response to the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre. Many desis erroneously believe Udham Singh popped Dyer.

34th Avenue isn’t known for classy or clean restaurants—which probably keeps the trend-chasing local foodies away. The area is an extension of Mill Woods, and the blue-collar Punjabis from neighbourhoods like Tipaskan, Meyokumin, and Sakaw don’t expect highfalutin decor—they don’t need ivory tables or drapes of emerald green. They’re okay with grit and grime. So am I. But I have limits.

Masala Wok embodies grit and grime, but some things are a huge turnoff. A thick layer of dust coats the toilet paper holder—probably untouched since the first round of the NHL playoffs. Pop-art yellow chairs are slowly browning to excrement colours and clash with black walls darker than Michael Myers’s soul. Laminated menus are smeared with crusted sauce stains you could chip away with your nails. And the tables are worn-out, longing for a restain, and look like they’ve taken more beatings than Barry Horowitz. The walls are adorned with corny advice like “Enjoy the Small Things,” “Love,” and “Smile”—utopian nonsense that belongs in a Hallmark card, not a dingy restaurant that could double as Mark Twitchell’s kill room. Oh yeah, there was also a fly that joined me at my table—and refused to leave, like a bad date with Seth Brundle.

Although the decor is unwelcoming—unless you’re a cenobite—if you come to the restaurant right after it opens on a Wednesday morning, you’ll be treated to one of the best Butter Chickens in Edmonton—a singular masterpiece.

It takes about 25 minutes to make—and it’s well worth the wait. Heaps of chicken flesh tower like active volcanoes over deep-orange, lava-like gravy, with debaucherous streams of oil and cream—and a big chunk of butter slowly dissolving into the fragrant inferno. I could smell the pungent chilli peppers—and they turned me on. I asked my server if they were green or Kashmiri red—he had no clue. But that’s okay—I could tell there were complicated layers, love, and passion in the masala-covered, charred chicken and the masala-soaked gravy. I’m talking more masala than a Manmohan Desai movie.

Sadly, the Butter Chicken was soundtracked by Satinder Sartaaj—I can’t stand his pretentious brand of Punjabi music—and some of Diljit’s B-sides. But there was a moment when Amrinder Gill saved the vibe with “Mel Karade Rabba”—an anthem from my youth, off the album Dildarian. I love Gill—his vocals are dreamier than Johnny Depp’s eyes in Cry-Baby, and perfect for a Butter Chicken good enough to excuse a busted toilet, a dusty toilet paper holder, even Seth Brundle’s metamorphosis. It’s so good, it might even soften the sting of yet another Oilers playoff collapse.

He’s a pioneer in the desi community. One of the first Punjabis I ever saw on local TV—alongside Sunny Sidhu.

Sidhu, who sadly passed away last week, was more of a jokester—cheeky, but in a good way. He was the Flavor Flav to Min’s Chuck D. They were both on A-Channel, but Min made the leap to the big leagues when he joined CBC—the home of David Suzuki and Peter Mansbridge—in 2001.

I came of age watching Min on CBC. Back then, almost nobody on TV looked like us. You could make a case for Russell Peters, but I never saw him as one of us. He’s not desi. His parents had no accents and listened to Anne Murray. Our parents needed us to translate Punjabi into English anytime they spoke to white people—and they bumped Hans Raj Hans. Russell Peters mined a culture he never really belonged to for laughs and profit. Min uplifted it. He was one of us. And he showed me you didn’t need to be a doctor, lawyer, or engineer to earn respect in our community.

And his image stayed clean—which is nearly impossible in our community. Punjabis are often insular and gossipy. We know everything about everyone. Like how former NDP leader Raj Pannu’s sister was murdered by her husband with an axe in 1986. You might not know that. But the Punjabi community does. And we never forget.

Min’s a Mill Woods legend. And he’s a nice guy on top of that. No ego. That’s rare for a Punjabi of his stature. We’re usually loaded with hankaar—egomaniacal by default. And he’s got integrity. I remember him interviewing a drunk Vancouver Canucks fan before Game 7 of the 2011 Stanley Cup Finals—the same guy probably robbed Sears for Nevada jeans later that night and helped torch the city after Roberto Luongo shit the bed and let in three unanswered goals. Min told him he couldn’t wish him good luck. Because a real Oilers fan never wishes the Canucks or their fans good luck. We don’t care about Pavel Bure, Trevor Linden, and Cliff Ronning.

I first met Min at my wedding—he’s related to my wife—back in the summer of 2016. I was in the washroom at Nanaksar, staring at the mirror and making sure everything was in its right place—my beard, eyebrows, turban, sword—when I heard this instantly recognizable voice say, “You look good.”

I looked over, and there he was—Min Dhariwal. I tried to play it cool, even though I was kinda starstruck. I said, “Thanks a lot. My name’s Ramneek. You don’t have to introduce yourself—you’re Min Dhariwal. Everybody knows you.” He was humble, warm, laughed it off.

The next night, at my wedding reception—after my speech—I was calming my nerves with double Glenfiddichs at Maharaja Banquet Hall’s bar when Min called me over to say I did a great job.

In that moment, that compliment made me feel so good and so confident. Sadly, the night ended in violence, when my feral 46-year-old cousin got beat up on the dance floor for being too pervy.

Still, I got a compliment on my public speaking from Min Dhariwal. He’s a local celebrity who’s interviewed icons like Wayne Gretzky, David Beckham, and Nickelback (don’t laugh—“How You Remind Me” and “Rockstar” are fantastic songs).

Eight years after we first met, Min—alongside Jessica Ng—interviewed me on CBC Radio about my Butter Chicken Odyssey. It was a huge honour. I’ve been interviewed by Daryl McIntyre, Stacey Brotzel, Ryder & Lisa, Pati Jinich—all big names, all meaningful—but sitting across from Min meant everything to the Punjabi in me. I felt validated—as a Punjabi voice out of Mill Woods.

After the interview, Min suggested an anomaly for my odyssey: Duggan’s Boundary Pub. He wanted to know my opinion. So I checked it out.

Duggan’s Boundary Pub is in Bonnie Doon’s French Quarter—near Whyte Avenue, Mill Creek Ravine, and my pick for the worst restaurant in the city: Bulgogi House.

I like Bonnie Doon. It’s an old neighbourhood, with mature elm trees that once shaded generations—and now bear witness to gentrification in the form of tall, ugly, flat-roof infills. These things tower over the neighbouring gable-roofed postwar bungalows like Galactus, stealing their sunlight and murdering the neighbourhood’s character. I’m glad Mill Woods hasn’t been plagued by infills yet—though there’s one in Crawford Plains that’s so ugly it sticks out like a herpes sore.

Duggan’s Boundary Pub has a Tudor feel—reminds me of the pubs I saw in Southall last November. But I doubt this place plays Inderpal Moga or Raf Saperra like The Scotsman in London. It’s more about Caucasian classics from Paul McCartney and Loverboy.

The exterior has white stucco walls, black trim, and Budweiser banners celebrating the Oilers playoff run. Inside, it’s all brown wood panelling—browner than the residents of Bisset. And it looks old and weathered—I doubt any renovations have happened since Sam Malone and Diane Chambers were an item. The walls are covered in black-and-white photos of fighter pilots, Labatt ads, and portraits of legendary Oilers goalies, including Conn Smythe winner Bill Ranford and Curtis Joseph—possibly the greatest goalie to never win a Stanley Cup.

The menu has the usual pub staples—burgers, wings, nachos—and a section devoted to stews and curries, including Paneer Tandoori Masala and Butter Chicken.

The Butter Chicken is side-heroine beautiful—too messy to be an A-lister—and it’s served in a steel bowl. Rust-coloured gravy, cream swirls, and a dusting of fenugreek. A solid tomato foundation, loaded with coriander, paprika, and mirch.

But the chicken is a bit too soft—like a fragile ego—and not fresh. It took maybe five minutes to hit the table, which means it was probably sitting in a steamer in the back. And it’s almost ruined by the garlic naan and cumin rice.

First off, I didn’t taste any garlic or cumin—and I know these flavours like I know Mobb Deep’s discography. My sweat tastes like garlic and cumin—I could season an auntie’s vindaloo by running on her treadmill.

The pita chip naan is store-bought crap—dry, bland, and about as Punjabi as Roseanne Barr. The rice is lukewarm, limp, lifeless basmati. Together, they’re an albatross—dragging the Butter Chicken down to mediocrity and pissing me off.

The Butter Chicken needs a winger like Leon Draisaitl in its garlic naan—but instead, it gets this shitty, cardboard-textured junk (not even Suraj-branded). It couldn’t hold a fourth-liner’s jockstrap—or even a healthy scratch’s.

Still, the Butter Chicken mostly delivers—but it deserves better. The pub isn’t doing it justice. It’s teaming it with inferiority and incompetence, the same way Stan Bowman did with Connor McDavid this year. This Butter Chicken belongs in a proper desi restaurant—with fresh, house-made naan, covered in chopped garlic and butter, and fragrant, warm rice.

Also, I’d prefer to eat this in an Indian restaurant—because Duggan’s Boundary Pub attracts drunk philistines during the lunch hour. I was hoping for a Norm or a Cliff, but instead I got a grey-haired, moustachioed fellow who wouldn’t stop talking at me—about the Oilers, the weather, the daily special. He had the insight of an infant explaining trigonometry. I tried to tell him I was a food writer and had to take notes on the Butter Chicken, but he wouldn’t let me get three words in. He’s exactly the type of person I try to keep out of my inner circle. A buffoon. I don’t want people like this in my life. I want people who care. People who listen. Kind people. Smart people. Good people. People like Min Dhariwal.

It mostly stems from childhood insecurity, especially my time at Sakaw Elementary School between 1990 and 1997. I was awkwardly stuck between two cultures—Punjabi and Edmonton white—and most of the teachers only made it worse.

In my memory, Sakaw’s teachers were especially mean. A few were decent: Ms. Plastow, Mr. McQuay, and Ms. Dochuk—who got me through my first existential crisis, gently holding my hand and telling me about souls and the concept of heaven. Exactly what I needed at seven.

But most were mean. Ms. S orientalized my skin and called my parents when I slapped a girl’s butt in Grade 3. I didn’t know it was perverted. It was a dumb, innocent gesture. I was a jokester looking for a laugh. I wasn’t sexually interested in her—I hadn’t discovered Baywatch, Pamela Anderson, or even my own sexuality. But Ms. S treated me like a predator. Like I was a Paul Bernardo in the making.

That night, my mom gave me the “murga” punishment: squatting, hands looped under and through my legs, pinching my own ears, while she struck my back with a wooden spoon. I bawled and begged for forgiveness, not even understanding what I’d done wrong.

Ms. K was another mean teacher. She slapped me in the head twice because I was too loud for her. Ms. M once ridiculed my wrong answers on a science crossword in front of the whole class like a wannabe standup comedian, making me feel even stupider than I already did. Ms. L, the music teacher, always looked at me with pure disgust. Like I was subhuman.

Thirty years later, I’m a university-educated man with a decent home in a safe suburban neighbourhood. But I’m still plagued by crippling self-doubt, and I know a lot of it comes from those early years, when those cruel Sakaw teachers made me feel dumb and worthless.

Those teachers didn’t understand how hard it was for kids like me. We were caught between two worlds—brown and white—struggling to learn the language, the culture, and the rules of their society.

Some Punjabi kids had it much easier. Their parents were educated, spoke fluent English, had high-paying jobs, were already westernized.

Mine weren’t. Both of my parents were blue-collar workers from India, neither with a college degree. My dad immigrated in 1977, my mom in 1984. It was an arranged marriage. They were never friends. They did their best, but the cultural gap was massive. And when I disobeyed or failed, it sometimes meant violence. That’s not a slight on them. That’s the norm in many Punjabi households.

Add to that the weight of their dreams: Punjabi parents want you to be a doctor—no matter what—just so they can attach their names to the prestige. That’s why so many dipper kids become doctors—even if it means chasing a medical degree in a third-world country because they weren’t smart enough to do it here. They’ve been brainwashed into thinking it’s the only profession that matters.

Sakaw’s teachers were supposed to help us integrate. They were supposed to inspire us like Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society. But most didn’t—and I was thinking about that a few weeks ago at Taste of Shangri-La, when their soundtrack featured a heavily accented Chinese woman talking about the recorder. That woodwind instrument gives me PTSD-style flashbacks. It was one of Ms. L’s favourites—our first instrument in music class. We had to learn songs like “Bonnie Bee” and “Hot Cross Buns.” That corny shit never meant anything to a kid raised on Charanjit Ahuja productions.

Sitting there in Taste of Shangri-La’s red-and-black vinyl booth, thinking about Ms. S fawning over Elvis Stojko, Ms. M putting me down, and my busted ukulele hidden in Ms. L’s class—I actually fought back tears. I’m a father now. I’d hate for teachers to treat my child that way. I’m glad not all teachers are white anymore. There’s some diversity now. The idea of only white teachers in a Canadian school is absurd.

Still, Mill Woods teachers should’ve known better back then—even if they were white. We were lower-middle-class immigrant kids. We needed help, guidance, and care. Not ridicule and humiliation. It was supposed to be “a world of learning and a world of fun”—that’s what we sang in the Sakaw school song. Instead, it was a world of fear, despair, low self-esteem, and painful memories. We were just innocent children, caught between two worlds, with no idea where we belonged. We deserved better.

Taste of Shangri-La is also torn between two worlds. Outside, it advertises Indian, Chinese, and Nepalese food in garish maroon and yellow. Inside, it screams dude ranch, with cowhide booths, log chairs, lassos, rusty chaps, and a black-and-white portrait of the whitest man who ever lived: John Wayne.

I don’t hate John Wayne. I actually like a few of his films—The Searchers, Red River, Rio Bravo, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance—but I never thought he was all that. He was simple, plain, and didn’t deserve the Oscar in 1970. Jon Voight did, for Midnight Cowboy—a film Wayne hated because of his homophobia.

As a man of colour, I struggle with John Wayne’s legacy—especially after what he said to Playboy in 1971: “I believe in white supremacy until the blacks are educated to a point of responsibility.” The irony is, Wayne never even finished college and didn’t possess a fraction of the brilliance of minds like James Baldwin or Maya Angelou. Who the hell was he to comment on anyone’s education?

I’m digressing. Maybe spiralling again. John Wayne triggers me. So does the recorder. And Ms. L. Ms. S. Ms. K. Ms. M. Teachers who never made the effort to educate me to that so-called “point of responsibility.”

But enough about cruel teachers and John Wayne’s legacy. Let’s talk about the butter chicken at Taste of Shangri-La.

It sucks. Easily among the worst in Edmonton.

Huge, unseasoned cubes of rubbery chicken—blanker in taste than Breathless Mahoney’s alter-ego—floated lazily, like ugly hippos, in a diarrhea-hued, garam-masala-heavy sludge that needed more fire. I couldn’t taste any of the tomatoey base that defines real butter chicken.

There was an asymmetrical splash of cream, mimicking the trajectory of a money shot in some amateur POV video. All of it dumped in an oval bowl better suited for lasagna—or white-people gravy. My long, fat fingers couldn’t even scoop properly in that thing. I found myself longing for a proper karahi, like you get at actual Indian joints.

The Butter Chicken tasted like it was made for westerners who never push their palates. The same kind of people who taught us nothing but demanded we act like we’d been taught. The kind who refuse to let immigrants educate them to that “point of responsibility,” and end up ruining the local food scene the way those Sakaw teachers almost ruined me.

Then I found Kashmiri Delight, home to one of the best bone-in butter chickens in Edmonton.

Mostly a take-out joint, it has just three teal leatherette booths for dining in and sits in a new strip mall beside the chronically disappointing Cosmic Pizza in Lewis Farms.

Orange and peach walls. Freshly mopped brown vinyl plank floors. Faux plants. A textile embroidered with pigeons. No customer washroom—so I couldn’t check for crusted urine stains or vagabond pubic hair.

The soundtrack: Punjabi mashups of chopped-and-screwed Shubh blended with a high-pitched Imran Khan, the one-album wonder who ruled 2009 with Amplifier, Nai Jeena, and Bewafa. All three tracks played at Kashmiri Delight, stirring nostalgia for the time I watched Khan lip-sync his way through a local Halloween show.

I saw only two employees—black-uniformed, middle-aged, and soft-spoken. Both asked, almost begged, for Google reviews, sounding more desperate than my friends who fly to India for arranged marriages—a sign the restaurant’s doomed, like the Lisbon sisters.

At the front counter—beside a display of sweets (gulab jamun, rasgulla), two-litre bottles of Pepsi and Coke, and cans of Sprite and Thums Up—a small sign warns that each dish takes 15 to 30 minutes. Mine took nearly 35.

I passed the time with a fart-flavoured lassi (meant to be mint lassi) and the restaurant’s coffee table book, Landscapes of Kashmir. Its gorgeous visuals evoked memories of the 1965 Shashi Kapoor classic Jab Jab Phool Khile, later remade as Raja Hindustani.

Kashmiri Delight’s butter chicken comes in a rust-coloured, thick gravy—smooth, with none of the jarring garlic, onion, or cardamom chunks you find at lesser spots. Fenugreek dust drifts through, invading like pod people in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The cream swirl is irregular and broken, streaked with oil and two sinking chunks of butter. It’s not pretty—lacking the Wes Anderson symmetry of the now-defunct Junoon’s butter chicken—but it looked and smelled like the real thing, triggering a tsunami-like Pavlovian response.

The gravy hides four bone-in pieces—two legs, two thighs, all dark cuts—plus chicken niblets scattered throughout for protein in every bite. Clay-oven cooked and yogurt-marinated, the meat is tender enough to glide off the bone like Auntie Pam’s legendary jerk chicken at Irie Foods.

The dish comes in a big bowl—which means more gravy for you to soak your buttery naan through. And the gravy is the star: bone-in chicken enriches it with collagen and marrow. As the marrow melts, it seeps into the gravy like Trudeau’s international students from India, permeating everything and bringing fats that deepen the flavour, add meatiness, tame the sweetness, and trap the fenugreek, garam masala, and Kashmiri mirch. The result is one of the most intensely flavoured gravies I’ve tasted—and better than anything I’ve had in Mill Woods.

The front is plastered with stock images of momos, samosas, and tandoori chicken. A poster of two mehndi and chura-covered hands pressed together in a namaste greets you at the door, leading into a dining room of brown booths and tables set with wine glasses, black napkins, silver cutlery, and laminated menus.

On the walls hang portraits of Nepalese architecture alongside TVs looping shots of the Himalayas. Cube lanterns dangle from the exposed ceiling, glowing warmly with images of mountains, yin-yangs, and cannabis.

In the corner rest instruments of traditional Nepalese music: a madal, sarangi, wooden flute—and a tambourine, which always makes me think of two men: Liam Gallagher and Gurdas Maan. Sadly, the instruments sit silent as the speakers ooze spa-piano dreck that makes you want to ram Q-tips into your eardrums.

The Butter Chicken: smooth orange gravy, streaked with cream and dotted with chopped green chillies—tossed in late, creating disharmony, like a sloppy posthumous beat on a 2Pac vocal.

The gravy is littered with unseasoned chicken cubes, a sign the chefs don’t understand the meaning of Mirch Masala. No clay oven, no artistry. Just a poor bird hacked into dry pieces, leaning on the gravy for salvation.

But the gravy isn’t John 3:16—it offers no redemption. Cloying and tomatoey, with a whimper of heat, it betrays the chicken.

The Nepalese joints in Edmonton have mostly disappointed me during the Butter Chicken Odyssey. New Gurkha is the lone anomaly; they made a fantastic Murgh Makhani. The others—Kathmandu Rasoi, Green Beans, Taste of Shangri-La—fall into the same trap: tasteless chicken with no spice. It’s time their chefs rewatch Ketan Mehta’s 1987 cult classic Mirch Masala. Like Naseeruddin Shah, they need to be seared by our spices to remember what desi cuisine should taste like.

As I walked in, I spotted an old white wedding commissioner sitting alone. At first glance, I assumed he was an alcoholic getting drunk first thing in the morning—like Nicolas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas.

But it turned out he was actually officiating a Punjabi wedding party of just eight people, which threw me off. Our weddings are massive. I had over 600 guests at mine—and probably only knew about 175 of them. The rest were my parents’ and in-laws’ acquaintances—mostly strangers. My parents even invited their white barber, a Michael Rapaport lookalike, who rolled into the reception wearing a turquoise sports bra she passed off as a sari top. She thought she was channeling Rani Mukerji at the Filmfare Awards. Instead, she looked ratchet and nearly took out a kid on the dance floor with her drunk antics.

Maybe the bride and groom at Dawat-e-Zaika are new to Canada and just haven’t made many friends yet. The newbies often end up in Charlesworth or Laurel—renting the basements of established desis who can’t actually afford their homes, but still front like they’re Cash Money Records in the late ’90s.

Charlesworth is the new Mill Woods of Edmonton—so is Laurel—and home to many of the city’s desis. But it doesn’t have the same character as my beloved Mill Woods. The same grit. The same working-class spirit. The same soul. Instead, it’s got the monotony of a Vivarium neighbourhood—cookie-cutter two-story houses, puny backyards. Everything jammed together, skillion-roofed, charcoal-coloured, with engineered wood cladding slapped on the exterior, and those skinny, infill-style three-story boxes with raised patios. Ugly as hell.

Mill Woods, on the other hand, was and forever remains beautiful. Big green backyards. Unique houses—including four-level splits, bilevels, and bungalows. And seeing white people isn’t like playing Where’s Waldo? They’ve always been there—and they still are.

But as desis make more money and move on up, they abandon the aging Mill Woods for places like Charlesworth—and our restaurants move right along with them, including Dawat-e-Zaika: a massive, classy joint that reminds me of Junoon in Windermere, only with a much darker interior, perfect for hiding my adult acne and soda-stained teeth.

Tile floors. Emerald-green and dark-orange velvet seats, with booths along the walls. Twelve eccentric lanterns—some with tassels—dangling from the exposed ceiling, printed with images of tigers, giraffes, plants, and even pinup models. One wall holds an elaborate jewellery display of necklaces and earrings—what aunties in my day would simply call “a set.” They all look like something Heer might’ve worn when she was forced to marry Saida.

Bollywood instrumentals flooded the restaurant—tunes from older movies like Chalte Chalte, Deewaar, and Rocky. I recognized them all because I’m old—and because my parents raised me traditional, renting the latest Bollywood releases from the Spice Centre on 34th Avenue. Sure, I’d prefer the original songs, but I’ll take these over the cheesy covers with the dreaded saxophone—an instrument that belongs only on classic Bruce Springsteen records or in old porno.

Service was Vulcan-cold. Emotionless. I don’t think my server smiled once. Now, I’m not asking for Joker-level grins—but if I can smile through lifelong dysthymia and death anxiety, you could manage one too. Make me feel like a guest, not a piece of trash. You’d never find service like this at Mezbaan—their servers treat you like a celebrity.

The Butter Chicken was okay—but no Mezbaan. The gravy was thick, smoother than the velvet seats, with no streaks of oil or grease. It held together tightly—likely because of cashew paste. A thin cream swirl added some visual flair but didn’t sweeten the infernal gravy, which had been cranked up to meet my request for extra heat. The ingredients were blended so thoroughly I could barely pick them out—no jarring chunks of anything. I could see the fenugreek, but that was it.

The chicken messed things up. No tandoori char. Just tenderized meat with a hint of seasoning—but nowhere near enough to pass for Indian food. It dragged the gravy down, keeping it from landing the knockout blow. And there was a lot of it—a generous pile of pan-fried mediocrity. It hurt the dish the way a Bollywood producer hurts his movie by stuffing it with talentless nepo-babies who don’t deserve the spotlight. Maybe the other menu items are better—but if you botch Butter Chicken in Charlesworth, that’s like flunking kindergarten and just asking for shittar.

I still think about them. All the time. Sometimes I even dream about them, finding myself wandering the horror aisle, looking for movies from Argento, Carpenter, and Hooper. Once in a while, I’ll even sneak past the saloon doors to check out the Seka section.

The other day, I was at Pind Punjab, a 141-seat restaurant in the Meadowbrook Shopping Centre in Kiniski Gardens, when all those video store memories came rushing back. The place used to be a Blockbuster. In fact, there were once two video stores in the same plaza.

I was never a Blockbuster kid. I remember renting a few titles from there—Dennis the Menace, Halloween 4, and American Gladiators on the SNES—but the prices always felt a bit out of reach for my lower-middle-class family.

We relied on the cheaper mom-and-pop shops—Royal Video in Menisa, Balkar’s Video Shop in Crawford Plains, and the 24-hour Video Station in Tawa, where older titles sat in sun-faded plastic cases, ready to be rented for just $2.99 a week.

Those were my places until a conversation with my cousin Manv, at my sister’s fifth birthday in the summer of 1998, changed my life.

While taking a break from playing GoldenEye on the N64, he told me about Video Update—a video store just steps from the Blockbuster at the Meadowbrook Shopping Centre—with dirt-cheap prices: two older movies for 99 cents and new releases for $1.99 on Tuesdays.

Three days later, it was Tuesday, and I convinced my parents to drive me to Video Update, where I rented Game of Death, starring Bruce Lee, along with a few other movies I don’t remember.

I’d always been curious about Lee but had never seen any of his movies—or even an episode of The Green Hornet.

When I visited India for the first and only time in 1990, he was still a sensation—even though he’d been dead for 17 years. His face was everywhere: alongside Anil Kapoor posters and Kishore Kumar cassettes, I’d see Bruce Lee stickers, figures, and yo-yos. I saw him so often I started to think he was Indian.

Everyone in my family—even the biggest philistines—knew who he was and admired him. My mom once told me he was the greatest fighter who ever lived.

At that age (four), I was fascinated by violence. I was being raised on Sanjay Dutt and Sunny Deol—so I’d already seen some great fighters. But the greatest fighter who ever lived?!

Eight years later, I was in the action section at Video Update, holding the worn-out VHS cover of Game of Death in my young, almond-coloured hands. Lee stood shirtless and ripped in front of a bright orange background with a golden line-art dragon. He looked fearless and ready for combat.

I still remember watching that movie for the first time. The Golden Harvest logo—those four drum hits, that iconic high synth note. Then John Barry’s dramatic horns. I could give you a play-by-play of Bruce’s fight with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar from memory, and I’ll never forget that yellow jumpsuit—the one Quentin Tarantino paid homage to in Kill Bill.

I loved that movie so much I kept rewatching it. A week later, I was back at Video Update, renting every Bruce Lee title—Fists of Fury, The Chinese Connection, Return of the Dragon, and Enter the Dragon—before moving on to other films.

For the next year, Tuesdays always meant movie night. I rented everything from cult horror (Hello Mary Lou, The Sentinel) to obscure kung fu flicks like Slaughter in San Francisco. Thirteen-year-old Ramneek became a full-fledged movie geek.

Twenty-seven years later, video stores are gone.

Meadowbrook Shopping Centre still stands, but Video Update is now a cannabis shop, a Subway, and a Panago. The neighbouring Blockbuster is Pind Punjab—an extremely disappointing restaurant that celebrates Punjabi culture with its imagery but serves a lazy, awful Butter Chicken.

Visually, Pind Punjab had almost everything to lift my spirits and keep me from dwelling on the long-gone Video Update years: life-sized bhangra statues, a mini Tata truck, and images of jago ceremonies and kabaddi. It was Punjabi to the max. There was even an alcove wall lined with gabroo and mutiar figurines, along with a tumbi—my favourite instrument of all time, immortalized by GOATs like Lal Chand Yamla Jatt and Muhammad Sadiq.

Still, the food was unforgivably bad. Outside, the restaurant advertises “Pind Da Swaad” Butter Chicken—supposedly capturing the authentic taste of the village. Which is nonsense, unless the chef’s village is full of incompetent bawarchis.

This is a strong contender for the worst Butter Chicken in Edmonton: tomato-heavy, food-coloured to death, grossly sweet, with sliced green chillies thrown in to fake heat over an old, monotonous gravy. And those factory-cut, uniform chicken-breast cubes—overcooked separately, charred, and completely unseasoned.

No depth. No layers. No talent. The kind of Butter Chicken that would cause a riot at a desi wedding reception—and it left my hands reeking like I’d survived Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, orange-stained for the rest of the night, my mouth numb from the sweetness.

To make matters worse, the restaurant shifted from a Mohammed Rafi soundtrack—’60s and ’70s tunes from films like Kanyadaan and Hum Kisise Kum Naheen—to shabads: religious hymns playing on the TV, while Sobha Singh’s famous portrait of our first Guru stared into my soul as I ate Butter Chicken. Meat is forbidden in our religion.

It felt like Pind Punjab wanted me to feel guilty for eating Butter Chicken. So they made something almost inedible and forced religious hymns on me.

And in that moment, all I could think about was Meadowbrook in 1998—a better time when Video Update was still there, a place of new worlds, full of violence, nudity, and heroes and villains, offering escape to a lonely, 13-year-old brown boy.

I was introduced to Goblin’s music in 2009, when I was twenty-four and renting movies from The Lobby every week. During one visit, the store’s owner, Kevin Martin, recommended Dario Argento’s Suspiria.

It was a haunting and dazzling piece of cinema. Like Starry Night come to life—with grisly violence and cartoon-coloured blood dripping off the screen. But it was also deeply flawed. Clunky dialogue. Wooden performances. A lethargic pace. Unintentionally funny.

What stayed with me wasn’t the story but the sound. Goblin’s score expanded my musical palate. The sinister Moog synths, demonic chants, and bizarre percussion felt unearthly to my John Williams–shaped ears.

Days later, I was back at The Lobby, fiending for everything Goblin and Argento: Deep Red, Tenebre, Phenomena.

I even made a holy pilgrimage to Profondo Rosso, Argento’s horror-themed novelty shop in Rome. Down in the basement museum, I found a treasure trove of memorabilia—including props from Demons, my favourite Italian horror film. As I looked at those artifacts, I could hear Goblin’s instrumentals in my mind.

The Goblin gig should’ve happened at the Garneau twelve years ago. Back then, I worked at the theatre as a Front of House rep—popcorn maker, machine cleaner, bartender, bouncer, marquee changer—and I was knee-deep in my Goblin and Argento obsession. During a staff meeting, the programmer mentioned he’d had the chance to bring Goblin to perform Suspiria live. The cinephiles lit up. Then he dropped the ball, choosing to screen The Big Lebowski for the umpteenth time instead.

His vision for the theatre was terrible, and it suffered for years. The guy was so out of touch he once considered showing The Act of Killing, a documentary about mass executions, to a group of schoolkids. He almost ruined Metro Cinema.

Twelve years later, Metro’s programming is in better, safer hands—and they finally brought Goblin. It was amazing.

The Suspiria set dragged in places, but that’s because the movie itself drags in places. Once Goblin hit the post-Suspiria set, though, it was pure fire—every banger, including the theme from Demons, plus a killer reinterpretation of Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells.”

After the gig, I took a thirty-minute walk down Whyte to my car. I never pay for parking and always leave my vehicle behind a 100-year-old Gothic church. The chill hit my forty-year-old knees hard, my nose ran like Donovan Bailey, but I was euphoric. The Goblin synths still echoed in my head, and suddenly I was hypersensitive to every sound on Whyte: angry drunks, happy drunks, Oilers fans celebrating a win over the Canucks, and early-2000s anthems blaring from bars: “Hollaback Girl,” “Get Low,” “I Just Wanna Love U.”

Then a black SUV rolled by, dhol pounding, Himmat Sandhu’s unmistakable voice on “Poonian.” The turbaned driver and I exchanged smiles—a brief, perfect moment of Punjabi solidarity. Mill Woods would’ve been proud.

Then I thought, the only thing that could make this night better was a good, spicy Butter Chicken.

But Whyte Ave has a Butter Chicken problem. Namaste India’s ravaged my anus, New Spice Grill smells like a sewer backup and serves food on dirty plates, and Remedy Cafe is the antithesis of desi culture. The rest—Chatkhara, New Everest, The Great Indian Delicacy—were closed. Then I saw Daawat, its bright red sign glowing: Open until 2 a.m. A sign from the Butter Chicken gods.

Inside, I was struck by a neon-aqua glow straight out of a Michael Mann movie—with Anthony Kiedis crooning “Under the Bridge.” There wasn’t a hint of desi decor—just wallpaper swarmed with bees like a Candyman crime scene, neon spades glowing above, vinyl booths under crystal chandeliers, and a wall of fame featuring mafioso icons: Henry Hill, Tony Soprano, Paulie Walnuts.

It wasn’t Indian, but it was familiar. Desi millennials like me grew up deifying those pop-culture gangsters, and I was no exception. The soundtrack was on point—Spice Girls, Eagle-Eye Cherry, Pras, Mya, and ODB reworking “Islands in the Stream.”

My Butter Chicken arrived fifteen minutes later—steaming hot, served in a big karahi. The heat, alive with pungent spices, pushed the cream outward until it gathered along the rim, giving it the look of a messy dhaba-style Butter Chicken, not a Michelin-starred version with a perfect swirl. The Bearspaw-brick gravy wrapped around chicken pieces more tender than LL Cool J on “I Need Love”—juicy thigh meat, not factory-cut breast cubes—soaked in Kashmiri mirch, cilantro, black pepper, and fenugreek, and burned with tandoori char.

A fiery beast that, in my mind, redeemed Whyte Ave at the tail end of the Butter Chicken Odyssey. So good it made my Goblin night even better—and made me feel something extremely rare: happiness.

One of my best friends passed away three years ago, and it still haunts me. His death taught me how fickle life is. How there’s no fairness or order to any of it. The grim reaper doesn’t care about your unfinished stories. Your friendships. Your loves. He just takes, and suddenly, everything that made you you dissolves into eternal darkness.

Death’s been following me across my social media feeds. Icons dying. People I idolized. Hulk Hogan, Diane Keaton, Charanjit Ahuja. I’m a pop culture nerd, and hearing that these giants of wrestling, film, and bhangra were gone hit me hard.

And to make it worse, my favourite uncle, Gurmail, passed away after a long battle with cancer.

I hadn’t seen him since my wedding several years ago. My last memory of him is in my Crawford Plains backyard, wearing an orange shirt and grey pants, telling my wife how awesome I was. I don’t think I’m awesome, but he painted a Rembrandt-style portrait of me for her using the most flattering adjectives in the Punjabi language.

My sister got married in September. Gurmail Uncle couldn’t attend because of his illness, but he called my parents right after the ceremony, and I could hear his voice on the other end. His voice was vibrant and legendary in our house. He was the king of the uncles, fiercely intelligent, movie-star handsome, effortlessly confident. A natural storyteller who stood tall as our family patriarch.

After he moved to B.C. in the mid-’90s, things slowly went downhill for our family. Other uncles tried to fill the void. Some of them were good, but none could match his presence. They’d stumble through faux pas, like referring to bipolar disorder as “bipolio.” They meant well, but they were no Gurmail.

And he was a good man. When my father was betrayed by another family member and left with bad credit, Gurmail stepped in. He helped us find our first home in Menisa, guiding us through house hunting and looking out for my dad like a real brother. He wanted all of us to succeed.

The other day, I was stuck on the Henday and my phone and Spotify died. So I sifted through the glove compartment and found an old burnt CD: Heera’s Cool & Deadly, a 1989 UK classic produced by Deepak Khazanchi. He pushed Punjabi music beyond its traditional instruments—the harmonium, the sarangi, and my favourite, the tumbi—and started a revolution.

I was trapped on the Henday for the duration of the album, and as the final track, my favourite—“Nach Diyan Dowain Soniyan”—played, my mind time-travelled to Gurmail Uncle’s old light-blue house in Bearspaw, circa 1990. I saw myself in his basement, five years old, standing next to the bar, watching his daughter dance with my Rani Auntie to that same song, the two of them spinning each other in a kikli. The memory hit hard, and tears started to roll.

I needed a drink.

A few minutes later, I was at Spirit of India, ordering a Captain Morgan cocktail—and extra-spicy butter chicken.

I never eat when I’m grief-stricken, but I figured that focusing on my Butter Chicken Odyssey might calm me enough to go home, keep it together, and play dad to my four-year-old.

But that was impossible, because a new thought began to gnaw at me: I have no photos with Gurmail Uncle. I have plenty of photos of him smiling, dancing, holding court over the other uncles, but none of us together.

I tried to focus on something else: the decor. Red diner-style booths that could’ve been lifted from Rockin’ Robyn’s. A glossy tile floor. Golden orbs above the bar. A white oval drop ceiling punctuated with twelve puck lights glowing purple, like Prince controlled the playlist.

But even with all those visuals, I couldn’t shake the feeling. That’s the worst thing about OCD: once my mind locks onto something, it never lets go, even when I’m devouring great butter chicken.

Dark, rich, mahogany gravy. Fiery Kashmiri-red chillies imported from B.C., where my uncle lived and died. Three chunks of butter melting slowly, tempering the heat. The cream and butter perfectly blended, the sauce smoother than Rakim’s flow.

Although I was enjoying the butter chicken—it was truly amazing, and would easily make my Top 5 if Spirit switched to juicy chicken thighs (they use breast meat)—I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that I have no photos with my uncle.

Then I heard it. A familiar sound coming through the restaurant speakers: the tumbi.

That single-string instrument has soundtracked our stories across oceans, from Punjab to Canada, on old records by Muhammad Sadiq, Surinder Shinda, and Kuldip Manak, all of them tumbi masters.

Spirit’s soundtrack was more modern: Sharry Maan’s now-classic 2012 album Aate Di Chiri. But the tumbi was crisp enough to touch the soul on songs like “Chandigarh Waliye,” “College Wali GT Road,” and “Bhull Jayin Na,” all produced by Canadian Nick Dhammu.

Those songs pulled me back to my late twenties, to weddings where Sharry’s anthem “Disk Ch Kali” blared through banquet halls, the dhol pounding away, everyone drunk on Glenfiddich and Grey Goose.

And I remembered one wedding in particular, my cousin’s. The songs from that night still echo in my mind: the one-hit wonder “Aao Nachiye” by Sangeet Group of California, and Malkit’s pleaful “Puttar Mitre Meway” during the slideshow.

Then it hit me. I did take a photo with Gurmail Uncle that very night. We were dancing with his equally lovely wife, my aunt Amrit, and I’d pulled out my brand-new iPhone 5 for a selfie.

After remembering this, I went home, ran to the furnace room, and found a box with my old phones. I found the iPhone 5, charged it, and scrolled through photos like a madman. And then I found it: a blurry one, but one that now means everything to me. Me, Amrit Aunty, and my beautiful Gurmail Uncle, all smiling, all alive, all enjoying life.

The photo won’t bring him back or make the grief any lighter, but it’s proof that we shared something. Proof that I loved this great man, and that he loved me right back.

In Grade 11, my friend Ranjha got jumped on Halloween.

He was pushed, slapped, and had his candy stolen. I don’t know why he was trick-or-treating at that age, but he was a tiny guy with no facial hair and could still pass for twelve. The thieves, led by an older guy named Majnu, chanted “Candyman” at him like he was Daniel Robitaille. I think they even made him cry.

The next day at school, Ranjha told me what happened. He was fuming and wanted revenge. He felt emasculated. He had a crippling Napoleon complex. Always trying to compensate by pumping iron at the Mill Woods Rec Centre and idolizing violent figures—2Pac, Tony Montana, Bindy Johal.

He even got into fistfights and lost. Beaten, bloodied, and begging for mercy while the rest of us were writing diploma exams. By then, he’d abandoned our friendship to hang out with wannabe gangsters, fueling a dangerous Sikh–Muslim conflict that had already tainted Mill Woods and claimed young lives.

Before he drifted away, though, we were close, and I was stupid myself. Fresh off an ugly run-in with my ex’s new Urkel-like boyfriend in the Harry Ainlay hallways, I promised Ranjha I’d help with his revenge. He knew where Majnu lived—somewhere in Jackson Heights—so we used our lunch break to find the house.

I was sacrificing a lot for Ranjha, because at the time I had a passionate, older girlfriend, freshly out of an intense two-year relationship. She was in full rebound mode—very giving—and teaching me carnal things I didn’t know.

I gave up a lunch hour of that (backseat love in my mom’s blue ’92 Chevy Lumina minivan) to see where Majnu lived. We drove circles through identical cul-de-sacs before Ranjha finally spotted the house, just minutes before the school bell rang.

After classes, we went back, listening to All Eyez on Me (Tape 2) to build courage and set the mood. But Majnu never showed. We waited half an hour, watching the house like narcs, but nobody went in or out. We decided to come back later.

The next day, we were ready again. But first, we stopped by our friend Mirza’s place in Twin Brooks to play GTA III, a new PS2 game everyone was talking about. I tried to get him to come with us, but he wouldn’t. That kind of drama wasn’t his thing.

When Mirza said no, I started getting cold feet. I wasn’t tough. Beneath my brown boy bravado, I was a coward. And it hit me: I didn’t even know Majnu. He wasn’t my enemy. And I didn’t even like Ranjha that much. Sure, he’d introduced me to Jenna Jameson in Grade 7 and changed my life, but he did stupid things: skipped all his classes, always wanted to listen to “The Hamster Dance,” and lived under his mom’s thumb in this weird Ed Gein-type way. She’d dress him down in front of us, and he’d just whimper, “Yes, Mummy Ji.” And then there was the time he said he wanted to pick up girls from Kate Chegwin Junior High. We were in high school—and that was just R. Kelly gross.

I don’t remember exactly what I said to Ranjha to tell him it was a no-go. I know I tried to be gentle. I probably warned him it could turn into a back-and-forth that ended in bloodshed.

Ranjha was crushed. He almost cried. He always cried. Once, after a car accident, his mom picked him up and he was sobbing in the backseat like a toddler.

That was 2001.

Ten years later, Majnu murdered his own father.

He crushed him against the garage of their new home in Magrath Heights with his SUV. Then he stomped on his head. Voices in his mind told him to purge the demons from his father’s soul. Majnu had paranoid schizophrenia.

When I heard the news, my jaw dropped. I called my wife. Told her about my strange history with Majnu—and how he’d committed patricide in Magrath Heights, a high-end neighbourhood I’d never even heard of.

I drove through the area for the first time today, on my way to Rangoli Kitchen in Keswick. As I passed those palatial Magrath houses, I thought about what Majnu did that Halloween in 2001 and what he did ten years later. A shiver ran through me. I was grateful I’d never sought revenge for Ranjha—and even more grateful I’d never crossed Majnu.

Because let’s face it, Ranjha was no good.

Rangoli, on the other hand, is. Mostly.

The servers are a bit much. Pushy about extra naan. Asking toddlers if they want dessert instead of checking with parents. Demanding Google reviews. Faking British accents.

But the soundtrack is great and old school, 60s to 80s Bollywood, including Mohammed Rafi, Kishore Kumar, and Asha Bhosle’s ghazals from Umrao Jaan.

Unfortunately, the retro-filmi block ended abruptly—no cross-fade—and gave way to the worst of Diljit Dosanjh. I’ve always loved Diljit, but this wasn’t the tumbi-and-dhol version I adore; it was the Bollywood-sweetened Diljit who became a Mumbai darling.

Visually, Rangoli is classy—and a little bougie, which explains the prices. A diya tray and wisteria garlands greet you at the entrance. Burgundy damask wallpaper. Moroccan pendant lights. Mustard-coloured booths. Slate blue barrel chairs. Perfectly aligned portraits of elephants, temples, dogs, airplanes, item numbers, and Las Vegas signs. It’s spotless until you reach the washroom, where the joint turns into a Freddy Krueger nightmare: forsaken pubic hair and numerous fossilized urine stains that look older than Mother India.

I was at the restaurant for about an hour and saw thirty to forty customers—all brown, so authenticity clearly isn’t an issue. My butter chicken had a problem, though: the breast was tough and could’ve used some dahi to tenderize it. Still, it was well-marinated, generously portioned, and submerged in a demonic-hot terracotta gravy loaded with what the manager said was red chilli powder—enough to numb my lips. The heat was balanced by the makhani and some honey, with fenugreek, cardamom, and diced bell peppers. Unfortunately, a few diced onions (I loathe that stuff) found their way into the gravy, but they were overpowered by the mirch and didn’t ruin the experience.

On the drive home, my morbid curiosity nearly got the best of me—I wanted to check out the actual murder site in Magrath Heights. Over the years, I’ve visited other local true-crime spots: Mark Twitchell’s rented garage (his “Kill Room”) and the front yard where Punky Gustavson was abducted.

But I’m forty now. Life’s different. I have to get home to my family, take my four-year-old daughter trick-or-treating, and hand out candy to kids and twenty-somethings dressed like David Pumpkins.

Gone are the days of those macabre, juvenile Halloween adventures: checking out the graveyard in Crawford Plains or driving past old murder sites. Domesticity and fatherhood have taken over. I’m a middle-aged square now.

Still, it’ll be an early night. My kid’s asleep by eight. After reading her a Robert Munsch book—maybe Mortimer—I’ll head down to the dark teal basement, turn off the lights, and start the new Netflix show on Ed Gein—the killer who inspired some of my favourite movies and always reminds me of Ranjha and his strange, sad relationship with his mother.

I didn’t realize I was at the wrong joint until I saw their name in big letters on the metal green awning. I hadn’t paid attention to the drive from the Grange—I was on autopilot. But the moment I spotted Bombay Street Tadka’s neighbour, Deepali Fashions, I knew I had to be in Mill Woods.

Maybe it was the universe’s way of telling me to close things out in Mill Woods—the place I’m always talking about, the place I love.

I walked into Bollywood music, which ended up soundtracking the entire meal. The Punjabi joints by AP Dhillon only kicked in when I was on my way out. So I had to sit through stinkers from 2 States, My Name Is Khan, and Barfi.

The restaurant tries hard to look trendy and modern. Hexagon-patterned wallpaper and white faux-stone walls. A checkerboard ceiling with a dirty vent hung overhead, while maroon booths lined a Ganesh-adorned window, and a divider wall featured a silly 3D leopard.

Service was lacking. The server told me they couldn’t make the butter chicken spicy—even though they did—and only gave me one napkin, which is absurd for Indian dishes. They also never checked on me while I was eating, which felt neglectful.

I wasn’t expecting much from the food—I’m a pessimist and expected a bad finale. But it was surprisingly excellent. Orange makhani—medium-thickness, tomato-forward, grainy, and sinfully oily—with a sprinkle of cilantro on top and minimal cream to emphasize the spicier elements. Inside the gravy, I found dark cuts of tandoor-marinated boneless chicken, each with a different shape and design, like a Mill Woods neighbourhood—not uniform factory cubes like the houses in the new suburbs.

After leaving the restaurant, I looked around. Confused. Trying to figure out which neighbourhood I’d wandered into. Then I saw a Domino’s I used to order from many years ago and knew exactly where I was.

Tipaskan.

An aging, decaying pocket of Mill Woods. A neighbourhood tainted over the past decade by a robbery and cold-blooded murder at the local Mac’s, and an attempted kidnapping at the elementary school by a man wearing clown makeup—something straight out of Joe Hill’s The Black Phone.

The murder—which happened back on December 18, 2015—was the first of two that night, both at separate Mac’s locations.

Laylin Delorme, Colton Steinhauer, and an unnamed 13-year-old accomplice robbed and executed 35-year-old husband and father Karanpal Bhangu before driving to another Mac’s in Pleasantview—that chain was like their Sarah Connor—where they robbed and executed 41-year-old Ricky Cenabre, shooting him in the back of the head.

Both Laylin and Colton were arrested and sentenced to 25 years, and the minor was charged with manslaughter.

They forever tarnished Mac’s for me. Now, when I drive past the Tipaskan location, I think of a young Punjabi immigrant trying to build a better life for his family, only to be murdered for no reason—he was complying with their demands.

Back in the day, that Mac’s was where my family friends—the Boparais—used to rent movies and video games and grab slushies. I can still picture the video game cases—they all had a He-Man–type figure throwing a punch.

I spent a lot of time there—and around Tipaskan. My childhood homes were in Menisa and Sakaw, but there was a house in Tipaskan that felt like a third home: a late 1970s white bi-level with no garage, a wood and stucco exterior, a partially finished basement, and a large living-room picture window.

It was my dad’s best friend’s house. For three years, every weekday, his mother, Gurdial Kaur, babysat me there while my parents were at work.

Gurdial Kaur, known as Bibi to all of us, was a saint. In my mind, the greatest human ever. At the time, I was a scared, socially awkward kid, an only child for almost nine years (and I’ll always think like one). A loner. Pampered. Extremely dependent on my parents. I struggled in social circles and was bullied at Ideal Day Care in Millhurst. One of the kids, who’s a big-time developer now, would eat all my butter and sometimes my paratha.

Noticing that I was getting skinny, my parents started dropping me off at Bibi’s. She took care of me, made sure I was fed, and kept me safe. She understood me like no one else. My shyness, my melancholy, my sensitivity, my loneliness. She just got me. It was like we had The Shining.

She would get upset with her grandkids when they wouldn’t play with me, even though it wasn’t their fault. I was shy and wouldn’t talk much. She helped me build my confidence, and she’s one of the main reasons I can speak Punjabi.

Bibi was always kind. Always patient. Even when I was annoying and inquisitive. When she was reading her gutka, I’d bombard her with silly questions, and she’d never lose her temper. She’d finish her prayer and then answer every single question I had. I’d sit there on the green shag carpet, listening to her wisdom all day. She was my best friend. I remember she was missing a fingernail, and I’d ask about it; she’d tell me tall tales about a cat that bit it off. I don’t think that was the truth, but it satisfied my curiosity.

She lived with two grandkids, and I looked up to both of them, and she never once let me feel lesser than them. When they were at school—they were older than me—I’d sneak into their room and stare at their 1988 Washington Redskins Super Bowl banner, their shelf full of Archie comics that later became Goosebumps, and the older brother’s desk drawer where I’d find Dinosaurs Attack! cards: gory scenes of humans being torn apart after scientists playing with time travel accidentally unleashed dinosaurs on the modern world.

After looking through the horrific cards—including one with a Satan-like dinosaur—I’d get creeped out and go sit next to Bibi in the living room to feel safe again and play with her grandkids’ wrestling figures. They had the big LJN rubber ones—Bruno Sammartino, the Killer Bees, Special Delivery Jones—and they even had the blue cage. It was the best. I felt safe and happy. No school, no mortgages, no property tax. Just Bibi and me and our bond. Love.

Twenty-one years later, I found myself dealing with intense sadness. A quarter-life crisis. Stuck in university, struggling through a science program I had no interest in. Friendless. Lonely. Depressed. I wished I was a kid again.

Bibi was in the twilight of her life. I hadn’t seen her in years because my father had a falling out with her son. As a result, our families drifted.

Then, one day, Bibi’s daughter called my mom and said Bibi had a nightmare—one where I was a young boy, crying with my arms stretched out, asking her to hold me.

When my mom told me this, I broke down. I don’t believe in telepathy, but it made me wonder. Was it The Shining? Did she somehow know I was in pain?

We arranged a visit with her at her daughter’s home in Blue Quill. It was the first time I’d seen her in years. I was twenty-six. Bibi was over ninety. She was frail, but the kindness and love in her eyes were still there. And she still had that voice that made me feel safe as a little boy. We didn’t exchange many words. She was emotional, and I tried to stay stoic because there were so many people in the room. She asked if I remembered her; I told her I did and would never forget. I wanted to express my gratitude, but she was hard of hearing, and I felt awkward expressing such heavy emotions in front of everyone.

When she said goodbye, she had tears in her eyes. She gave me money—her way of showing love—pressed her hands together in a Sat Sri Akal, and thanked me for coming. I told her not to thank me. I should’ve been thanking her.

I wasn’t able to tell her why. I wish I could have.

For the care.

For the safety.

For the unconditional love in my childhood.

For being my grandmother when I didn’t have one.

For filling that void.

For being my friend.

She died later that year. It was expected, but still devastating.

Her legacy is forever. In her grandkids, and in the countless others she touched, including me. We learned so much from her. Kindness, humility, patience, our language, our culture, and her spirit of charity. To this day, every donation I make to the Stollery is in her name.

Years later, her granddaughter was the one who convinced me to become a food writer—and, in a way, the Butter Chicken Odyssey would’ve never happened if Bibi hadn’t helped raise me. She taught me to love my culture while my parents were away, working countless hours to give me a good life.

It’s easy for blood relatives to love you—they’re supposed to—but the love Bibi and I had for each other was something else. Something special. Something pure. A love that never needed blood.

A love I’ll never find again in my life.

The End.