Capital Connections
Capital Connections Podcast
Capital Connections
Ep # 7 - Biryani Success with Vikas Marni of Biryani Walla Restaurant
Vikas Marni, owner of Biryani Walla Restaurant, shares his journey from culinary passion to successful restaurateur, emphasizing the rich diversity of Indian cuisine and dispelling common misconceptions about it. Listeners gain insights into the meticulous art of biryani preparation and the unique offerings available at his restaurant.
• Vikas's background and journey into the restaurant industry
• Overview of biryani as a dish and its preparation process
• Insights into the variety and regional differences of biryani
• Common myths about Indian cuisine and clarification of misconceptions
• Discussion on challenges faced in the food industry
• Importance of being hands-on as a restaurant owner
• Fun personal interests and hobbies of Vikas
• Restaurant location and contact details providing easy access for listeners
The Biryaniwalla Indian cuisine
130 Riocan Ave #1, Nepean,
ON K2J 5G4, Canada
+1613 823 7999
This is the Capital Connections Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Samuel Lowe.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Capital Connections Podcast. Today we have the pleasure of speaking with Vikas Marni of the Biryani Wala Restaurant.
Speaker 3:Vikas, thanks for joining us today. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, thank you for uh asking me to join on your podcast. I'm very happy to join you and share my experience regarding all the business which we have in indian restaurant yeah, yeah, well, excellent.
Speaker 2:uh, we're very happy that you, uh you did join, uh, and if I do get a pronunciation off a little bit, vikas, please feel free to correct me. Yeah, maybe let's start and tell us, you know, share with our listeners a little bit about what you do and your restaurant.
Speaker 3:What I do in my restaurant. Are you asking me?
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, just I, I guess tell us about your business and um, yeah, we are like a franchise owned business which is located all over ontario, like almost in nine different places, which serves different kind of biryanis which are mainly attracted from different places back in India. Each dish has the significant flavors and significant reason why we put those ingredients in that biryani. So back in India, if you know about biryanis and the places like, they know that why we put those names or anything and each this gives significant different flavors, like some people like eat spicy, some people like eat mild, medium, whatever their choice when they come to eat biryani. So we tended we are ready to cook in that way to meet their expectations and they come into our place yeah, fantastic, fantastic.
Speaker 2:I, for one, I love the flavors of Indian food and of curries. I'm blessed to have a spouse. My wife likes to cook curries, as does her family, so it's a real treat that I get on a regular basis. So, biryani just for our listeners who may not be aware, can you explain what a biryani is?
Speaker 3:So biryani is like if I want to say in a simpler way, like everyone can understand that it's a dish where we cook rice and meat together on slow flame. It's a slow process cooking. It's not like you cook in a particular temperature, it's like a slow cook dish. It takes at least 40 to 50 minutes to get it ready, Because it gives that aroma when you cook with spices meat and rice together Yep, delicious. So that's exactly the biryani, and everyone has their own style of cooking biryani Like some people will cook like with meat chicken together. Some people will cook it with chicken separate, like whatever is chicken meat, whatever the kind of meat, it's preferable what they use.
Speaker 2:Sure, and you know, I know there's all sorts of different flavors of biryani or different meats like lamb or chicken.
Speaker 3:Yeah, mainly delicious stuff. Yeah, mainly people use chicken and lamb for most of the biryanis.
Speaker 2:And it's a very complicated process. And thanks for that explanation, because really the biryani, the important element there is, it's a rice dish, so it's the meat with the rice. Yeah, excellent. Maybe, vikas, if you could share with our listeners your personal journey. You know how and why did you decide to open a restaurant here in Ottawa?
Speaker 3:Like in my opinion about my personal journey, about why I am into this business, is like since, like back in India when I was in doing my graduation and everything, graduation and everything I have this passion of cooking, so we are in, so I have that interest to go into this business. So when I moved to Canada, where I used to work as a part-time when I was studying, I used to work in the same chain where I open now. So there I used to work as a kitchen helper before. From there, I got promoted to the manager, from manager to operations manager. I got promoted to the manager, from manager to operations manager.
Speaker 3:So then I found a gap in whatever, because when I used to travel, like for fall colors or anything whatever, winter or summertime, I'd never find a good place to eat any Indian cuisine in whatever. So from there, we decided like I have I found a gap here in moto mainly to open an indian restaurant so that we can provide, we can serve so many people and we can tell them about what exactly the biryani looks at, what it is. So then I, we did a research almost for one year, from 2022, almost. We took one year to find a good place, find different areas like which area we can open. So it almost took one year for us to open here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, excellent, vikas. In what area of the city are you opened in, like your? Restaurant itself is where.
Speaker 3:We are currently located at the Bar Even Marketplace, which is 130 Rio Can Avenue, Unit 1. Excellent.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so in the south end of the city, what about you know? Is it a dine-in restaurant strictly, or do you do takeout, or how does that work?
Speaker 3:Yeah, we offer both dine-in and takeout. Like, we have almost 88 seating capacity of dining and we are available on Uber, skip and O-2. And we do have our own delivering system within our restaurant so people can order from our website if they want. They can choose the pickup option, whether it's delivery or anything. If they don't want to order somewhere on Uberber or anything, they can order delivery through our website too excellent, so nice and easy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, tell me, vikas, any myths or misconceptions that you know you could take the opportunity to clear up for our listeners about Indian food in general oh no, in my opinion there are a lot of misconceptions like sure, what Indian restaurant like generally people think food in general.
Speaker 3:In my opinion there are a lot of misconceptions. Sure, indian restaurant, generally people think not only here in North America, it's all over the world. In my opinion, everyone thinks that Indian food is spicy. That's the biggest misconception where everyone has. There are quite a few more things, like Indian food is not just curry.
Speaker 3:People think Indian food is only curry but it's not it's not curry, it's not butter chicken, it's not paneer tikka masala. There are, like, so many options. If you go and try to try different places, different cuisine in India itself, you'll find different places, different cuisine in India itself, you'll find different items, like different curries, like there are butter chicken and paneer tikkamas are famous for the world, but there are more items. And one more is, like all people, biggest.
Speaker 2:One more myth is, like people think all Indian restaurants, areian restaurants, are same, which is not at all true no, india is such a huge and diverse country, so I imagine the cuisine is different depending on the region you're in. Is it? Would that be right? Yeah yep and uh. So for uh, for the biryani, uh, wallah. You're mentioning at the beginning that you have a variety of different flavors, so would that be like a variety of regional flavors throughout india?
Speaker 3:yeah, like, uh, we have almost. We saw almost 60 kind of biryanis which has, yeah, almost 60 kind like which has significant in each region. Like we took one night one significant in each region. Like we took one night one dish from each region all over the India and we made it into our menu in according to the taste of the people, like what uh guests wants to try it in their spice level. Regarding spice level, if I want to eat something spicy, I have the highest spicy biryani like to serve for them. Like if you go to some mexican restaurant, if you ask, like I want spicy one, how they sell it, they'll let you know this very spicy one, like you cannot try it. In the same way we have like the highest spicy one to the lowest, mildest biryani. In the same way, in the entries and appetizers or whatever it is, we can cater everyone in their restaurant. Like two tastes.
Speaker 2:Yep, excellent, and so you've been open since 2023. Is that correct?
Speaker 3:Yeah, because Yep we opened 2023, september.
Speaker 2:September 2023. And as far as the first in the chain throughout Ontario, how long has the restaurant been serving people in Ontario?
Speaker 3:This chain has started almost in 2020. Okay, so precisely. Yeah, it's kind of like 2019 to 20, like start of 2020 and 2019. From there it started at one place as a single location. From there it slowly expanded to now almost 10 locations all over Ontario.
Speaker 2:Okay, excellent, so you know changing gears a little bit. Just to hear a bit about yourself, vikas, you know we've all endured hardships and challenges in our journey. Can you describe one that you rose above and you could now say you're in a better place for?
Speaker 3:it. So one of the hardships in this particular sector field where I'm working when I was an employee from to employee is finding the correct person for the correct job. That's the biggest hardship, mainly in food industry, because it looks like it's easy, but it's not an easy job.
Speaker 2:No question.
Speaker 3:Yeah, because standing over a long house, almost 10 hours, working at a single place without moving, and there's so much of heat, you work under so much of heat. So almost like if they're not that professional, like they cannot able to tolerate for certain amount of longer periods. So that's the main hardship. And one more thing is like if you want to open something, a food chain, what is either indian restaurant or some other chain, whatever, the main thing is the employer should know in and out of the business like in my opinion, like if he he should be able to work anywhere in the business, like no, I, I just opened, I should run the business. No, it's not like, you are the main thing, you are the first person should know how it works from start.
Speaker 2:And on a day-to-day basis. Uh vcas um, can you be found at the business itself today?
Speaker 3:yeah, I'll be available 24 by 7, like whenever the working hours. I'll be all the time here and oh, wow, okay, nice Okay.
Speaker 3:And outside of work. Vikas, how do you enjoy spending your time Right now? I enjoy my work itself, but when I get leisure time I mostly try it Inventory. I don't have anywhere to go, but if it's in summer I like to spend my time of like playing cricket if it is possible, like if time permits me to give me that ample of time to play, or I'll take a time for traveling. Mostly I like going for campings where I like in nature, very much in canada, so I'll prefer more all of the summer.
Speaker 2:I'll try prefer going for campings yeah, yeah, wonderful, and uh, I do. You find very many cricket pitches around, is uh I? I remember playing as a young kid, but uh, you don't see a whole lot of cricket in uh, locally. Yeah, have you been successful.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there are not like so many, but like few, which which are only developed for playing cricket, which are quite accessible for everyone nowadays.
Speaker 2:Yeah, excellent. What's the one thing you wish your listeners knew about your restaurant?
Speaker 3:I didn't get you sorry.
Speaker 2:What's something you'd want our listeners to know about your restaurant?
Speaker 3:So like I want the listeners to know that about our restaurant is like we are not only serve biryanis but people have a conception that biryani wala means only serve biryanis but we don't serve biryanis. We have more than that. Like we have dosas, we serve different type of kebabs. We have different where we like. We have some other, like shakes or anything, where people can come and try everything, not only biryanis, because so many people like dosa. I think you might know those sides.
Speaker 3:Rice lentil crepe sure yeah we have almost seven of 10 to 15 varieties which we serve, both veg and non-veg. And one more thing is we are not only vegetarian, we also serve both non-veg also yeah, excellent.
Speaker 2:Well, can you tell our listeners once again where you're located and how they could contact you?
Speaker 3:so we are located exactly at 130 ryokan avenue, unit one postal code is like k2j 5g4.
Speaker 2:It's marketplace, napien in the pnn, the main, you know a major intersection in the neighborhood would be it's's. Chapman Hills and Standard Excellent. Well, Vikas, it was a real pleasure getting to know you today and learning about your restaurant. Thanks so much for connecting with us and we look forward to seeing you out in the community soon.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much and thank you for giving an opportunity to share our experience to a wider audience and which will be helpful for us to growing business and connecting with more people.
Speaker 2:Yep, wonderful. Well, thanks again, vikas. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Capital Connections podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to CapitalConnectionsPodcastcom. That's CapitalConnectionsPodcastcom, or call 343-803-6268.