THEVAR’S GENESIS.
It’s been almost a year and a half since we opened. At the beginning when chef Sun Kim of Meta approached me to open a restaurant, we didn’t have any ideas of what we wanted to do. When thrashing out ideas, Kim suggested Indian-inspired food so we went to India, did some research, came back and dived right into it. I’d never cooked Indian food professionally before so it was very difficult for me initially. While I grew up eating Indian food, I never really cooked it, so a lot of techniques I had to learn from books, by googling.
SHARING IS CARING.
Indian food is meant to be communal. I felt that the type of dishes I was serving previously was quite restricted by the fact that I used to have more counter seats than table seating. I’ve cut down bar counter seating to just six and our dining area now accommodates bigger tables to facilitate sharing of food. There is a new chef’s table for ten right at the front of the restaurant; this will be for bigger groups and they can arrange for special menus.
WHAT GOES ON A PLATE.
What inspires me is that a dish is not just a plate of food, it is what it represents: the history and culture that goes into that one plate, the personal reinterpretation and the amount of work and passion that goes into producing that one plate, that is what Thevar’s cuisine is all about.
IT GETS PERSONAL.
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