Restaurateurs aim to spice up Vancouver's food scene with new Indian eatery

With us here in studio now is Shira Bluestein, the founder of the Arbor and of course, Acorn Restaurant as well. Shira, thanks for being here. Hey, thanks for having me. Also here, Miru Dawala. You’ll know Miru from her ventures with vidges and my Bambiri baby food as well. Mira, good to see you. Hey, Gloria. OK, why don’t we start with the decision to close the Arbor? Shira, what what happened there? Well, I mean there were a number of factors. Obviously I’ve it the current day is it is a tough one for restaurants to survive or thrive in. But Arbor always was meant to close March 31st, 2024 or at least was up. We knew from day one that that was the end. Whether or not we were going to renew was a new conversation to have. You know it seemed given that we had run and had a great course and we were so lucky to be around for as long as we were. It was. We decided that that was the right time for us to end a natural ending and what was it like the last few weeks since since you announced the closing? Honestly overwhelming the outpouring of love from our guests and customers all coming back for one more meal was it was I’m still like my heart is bursting from everyone’s support and love in during that time and it made us know how much we imprinted on people through what we were doing. And that was really special. OK well, let’s talk about something else special that’s going to be happening in that same space. Mira, why didn’t you jump in here? How did this how did you you come about this this concept together. Well, if you know me, you know that I also come up with about like 3 ideas a day and then in the course of a year, hopefully two or three of those ideas are going to kind of catch. And so Sheer and I have been friends now for 12 years and and we’ve always been talking about one day we’re going to do something together, one day we’re going to do something together. And you know, our pads are very similar, you know, in the sense that we’re juggling, you know, we’re business owners and Shira’s front of the house and running the business. I’m back of the house running business. We’re mothers. We’re like we just have so much in common and we complement each other. And not just, you know, across the dinner table and we’re having dinner together. But I think business wise. And then I think, Shira, you sort of talking about, oh, the Arbor lease is going to be up soon and I’m itchy, right? I was getting a little itchy to do something new and do something fun. And ever since I, I remember when I got that lifetime achievement award, what is it? Not Van City, Vancouver Magazine. And that kind of got something going like, oh, this is not the end of thing. Oh, no way. I’m what am I going to do next? And so I could just get excited when I have a new idea. And so we started talking about this in December. Let’s open, let’s let’s look at a new restaurant. And I think we just complement each other so well. OK, so what’s the concept, Shira? Well, the new restaurant is going to be called Leela and it is a surprise Indian restaurant on Main Street with Mirror heading up the menu in the kitchen and I’ll be running the front of house. OK. So how do you, how do you set, how do you, how do you put your personality into this restaurant Mirror and and your stamp on it, I guess is what I was going for. So I mean people must by this time know that there’s no such thing as just one type of Indian cuisine. Like we can have like 20 Indian restaurants in Vancouver and each restaurant’s going to taste different. So I’ve got Vidges and then Leela, the word, the name, the name Leela in Sanskrit, it means playful in a dramatic sort of a way. And so that’s what the cuisine is going to be. It’s going to be kind of dramatic, playful. It’s going to be more casual. It’s going to be mostly small plates. It’s we’re going to be focusing, I mean, the menu is going to have vegetarian food, vegan food. I’m going to have some seafood on the menu. No meat. Pardon. No meat. No meat. No meat. Vidges is meat. Do you want to eat meat? Go to vidges. You want to have chicken? Go to vidges. You want to just have a different cuisine and a bit of seafood. Yes. Seafood. Yes. Come to Lila. I mean, they’re all my babies. And. And so it’s, I think for us, the ambiance is a place where people can come and just be in the neighborhood, right. Just be. Just be at Lila. It’s not a it’s not that kind of. I don’t I think people aren’t the the restaurant ambiance is changing what customers want and after the pandemic even we restaurants. So we are trying to figure out in this cultural shift all right what do people want in our community right And we restaurants can’t stay static for 20 years. We had a good 20 years as is and now I think a lot of us are going to have to change and we can either be a part of that change and guide that change and say hey we’re changing or we can be passive about it and then say Oh no customers changed but we didn’t. So it’s we’re going to it’s for people to it’s more casual and I think it’s going to be a lot of fun and it’s smaller.