“We have lunch specials every day from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Our lunch special platters are a great way to try Indian food.”
Businesses and non-profit organizations regularly open and move in Saskatoon. Today the StarPhoenix talks to brothers Mohan and Sohan Singh. Together, along with their two other brothers, Rajinder and Puran, the foursome opened Darbar Indian Restaurant in downtown Saskatoon in March.
The four brothers were all born in India where they each learned to cook. Mohan came to Canada 25 years ago with the others gradually following over the years. Sohan and Puran studied hotel management in India before coming to Canada. The family originally opened Darbar Restaurant in Regina five years ago, and another location in Warman last year. They are proud to serve authentic Indian food with their own family recipes, offering well over 100 food items.
Q: What is your background in cooking?
Mohan Singh: We worked in India and Germany in different Indian restaurants. We know Indian foods. We’ve been cooking Indian food all our lives, learning to cook in India from other chefs.
Sohan Singh: We have all worked in restaurants for many years. Mohan and Rajinder started cooking when they were about 15 or 16 years old.
Q: What led you to open Darbar Restaurant originally, five years ago in Regina?
Mohan: We know cooking. We know all about restaurants and have the experience, so we opened our own instead of working for someone else. It was time to do our own business.
Q: Why open Darbar in Saskatoon now?
Sohan: Before we opened here, some customers would travel to Regina for our food. They were always asking, can you open in Saskatoon? Same with our customers in Saskatoon when we opened in Warman. They were always going to Warman. They know the name and they know the taste of Darbar. It’s been very popular. People like our food and we just keep the same menu, same taste, same name in all our locations.
Q: What is unique about Darbar?
Sohan: We use our own homemade spices in everything we make. We don’t buy ready-made mixes. We buy spices and we make our own recipes. It’s all fresh-made daily.
Mohan: Everything is fresh. Nothing is frozen and nothing pre-made and kept in storage. And we don’t do buffet. We have tasty lunch specials, and whenever a customer orders we make it right away, but not before. Our menu is marked for items that are vegan and gluten free so people can tell easily. Many items are made in our authentic Indian clay oven; that draws out the flavor in the food through the cooking process. Also when customers order, we always ask how spicy the want it – mild, medium or spicy – the customers can choose, so everyone gets what they want.
Q: Why are you called Darbar?
Sohan: Darbar is a very popular name in India. It means king’s court. A lot of kings have a gold palace for their home and they call it Darbar. Indian royal families use this name. We wanted a royal name for our restaurant.
Q: Do you have some appetizers that stand out?
Mohan: Some of our popular appetizers are shrimp pakora and samosa chaat. Shrimp pakora is marinated first in a ginger garlic paste and lemon juice. We put batter on it and deep fry it. It’s served with chutney and salad. The samosa chaat has potatoes and green peas inside flour. It’s deep fried and we add a mixture of yogurt, chickpeas and different herbs on top.
Q: You have a variety of kababs?
Mohan: We have tandoori kababs, cooked in our clay oven. The Darbar grill is our most popular tandoori kabab, but all our kababs are popular. The Darbar grill has an assortment of four different boneless chicken kababs with different tastes. There are seek, rider green chicken tikka, regular chicken tikka and paneer tikka. It comes with cottage cheese and fresh garlic naan bread and chutney.
Q: You serve some chicken entrees?
Sohan: We have our own butter chicken that is very popular and totally different from others, better than others. We have our own way to make butter chicken. We cook the chicken in the clay oven and we make our sauce separately, the authentic Indian way. It has tender chicken cubes, tomato and fenugreek. Many people comment that they’ve never had this type of food in Saskatoon.
Q: What other entrees do you serve?
Sohan: Lamb rogan josh and Lamb tikka masala are popular lamb dishes. Fish malabar curry is a popular seafood entrée from South India. Fish malabar curry is seer fish in a coconut base gravy and southern spices. We marinade it in batter and fry it in oil. Paneer tikka masala is grilled fresh with Indian cheese, peppers and onions and cooked in the clay oven.
Q: Do you have some lunch specials?
Mohan: We have lunch specials every day from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Our lunch special platters are a great way to try Indian food, as they come served with salad and rice, rice pudding, yogurt and curry and fresh garlic naan bread. People get to taste a wide variety of our food at a good price. People love these platters. But they are only at lunchtime. You can’t find anywhere else like this. You can come in and try the butter chicken platter or the vegetarian shahi paneer platter. The shahi paneer is cooked in tomato sauce, cream, butter, onions, ginger and spices.
Q: Do you offer takeout options?
Mohan: We have an express lunch to go. Butter chicken express comes with rice and salad. Another one is chana masala, which comes with rice and chickpeas for vegetarian. We do a lot of to go orders. One day in Regina we had 100 lunch express.
Q: Which breads do you serve?
Mohan: All our breads are cooked in the clay oven. We have several Naan breads. There’s a regular naan, paneer garlic naan, garlic naan, coconut naan and butter naan. Regular naan is just a flat bread made with Indian fine flour. The paneer garlic naan is flour stuffed with cottage cheese, Indian spices and fresh garlic on top. Garlic naan comes with fresh minced garlic. Coconut naan is made with shredded sweetened coconut and honey. Other places have butter naan and they cook the naan bread and put butter on top and call it butter naan. We make the authentic Indian butter naan.
Q: What drinks do you serve?
Mohan: Mango lassi is a yogurt drink with mango pulp in it. It is our own homemade yogurt. You won’t find this in the store. It’s just like a smoothie or milkshake. There is also a sweet lassi with sugar and a salted lassi with salt flavoring. We also have chass, which is a thinner, healthy drink with buttermilk.
Q: Do you offer desserts?
Mohan: Gulab jamun is an Indian milk ball soaked in a sugar syrup and fried in oil and served hot. It’s garnished with a coconut and fresh made in house. We also have a kheer rice pudding which is rice cooked in milk and garnished with jack fruit. And we have rasmalai, which are homemade cottage cheese balls cooked in a sweet cream milk sauce.
Q: You also serve Indo Chinese food?
Mohan: We serve Indo Chinese fusion food. Some of our most popular items are paneer 65 and gobbi 65. Paneer 65 is a spicy dish with cottage cheese. It’s cut into small pieces and made with batter and sauce. Gobbi 65 comes with cauliflower. We also have dragon chicken, which are very thinly sliced pieces of chicken mixed in batter and fried.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Darbar Indian Restaurant
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