Updated: 21st June 2012: This restaurant is closed according to Urbanspoon.com
At my place of work, we have a number of contract staff from India. They had been with the company for over a year already. A couple of weeks ago I bumped into them at the coffee machine. We chatted and of course I had to ask them this question “what is the most memorable Indian food you had ever tried in Vancouver?”
I still remember a long time ago when I had dinner with Michelle. Michelle is a another foodie who follows chowtimes but she hardly participated in comments. She knows her food and travels the world in search of good food (I like her lifestyle!). Well, knowing that she is familiar with East Indian cuisine, I asked her the same sort of question … “Is there a very good Indian Cuisine restaurant in Vancouver?” She could rattle off names of a lot of other type of restaurants … and she couldn’t come up with one that is Indian.
Yet another friend, also East Indian, said that it is hard to find really authentic home made Indian food too. He was telling me that the perennial Vancouver favourite, the butter chicken, is so westernized that he hardly want to try them in restaurants. He said that many restaurants will cream up the curries with whipped cream.
Yeah … there is so little I know about authentic Indian food although I grew up with Malaysian food which is heavily influenced by South Indian cuisine.

Back to the contract staff at the coffee machine …
Their answer to my question was unanimously “Dakshin”. My question launched them into an excited description of why Dakshin is their favourite restaurant. I enjoyed that conversation as obviously these guys are passionate about food as much as I do.
All of them are from South India and two of the more vocal ones are from the city of Hyderabad. They gave me a crash course on Hyderabadi cuisine saying Dakshin is an authentic Hyderabadi restaurant and the restaurant makes the food like they have at home in Hyderabad. The one dish they spoke so much about was the Hyderabadi Biryani.
So for the entire week, each time I bumped into them at the coffee machine, we were mostly talking about Indian cuisine and Dakshin’s dishes.
By the time Suanne and I got the chance to go to Dakshin on our Friday date night, I felt I already know what I wanted to order.
Dakshin is a long drive from home. It is in Surrey, a part of the Lower Mainland that I hardly go to. I am very sure that there are a lot of good restaurants but I know so little of the place. Anyway, Dakshin is located on King George Highway at the intersection with 80th Avenue. It’s easy to find.

Dakshin is a nice big and spacious restaurant. It is clean; a little dim with soft lights. Sorry, I color corrected the picture above and it turned out to be brighter than it is. LOL!
It was quite empty on that Friday night. Despite the size of the restaurant which can seat … ooh … 60-70 people at least, there were only 3 other parties.
We were initially served by a young Indian girl. She was soooo soft spoken and shy. I asked too many questions and she appeared unsure in her replies. So she got someone else to help us — a guy who seems in charge of the floor that night. He was really helpful and obliging with all the dumb questions I had. He was also very knowledgeable too.

Click on pix above if you can’t read the small prints.
Here is a bit more info … the name Dakshin simply means “South”. This restaurant specializes on food from Hyderabad and Chattinad. The waiter told us that they spare no effort in making their famous Biryani the way it is uniquely done in Hyderabad — no corners cut. He also told us that their chef is a chef who used to work in the Taj Palace (it’s a hotel, not a palace BTW) in Hyderabad. I thought the way he said it like its a big deal adding that the Taj hotels and palaces are the finest hotels in India.
The waiter also told us that Dakshin is one of only two Hyderabadi restaurants in Metro Vancouver. The other one is also owned by them a few blocks away which serves crepes and snacks. Dakshin had been operating for the last 1.5 years already — so, pretty newish.




They don’t have a big menu. Just four pages of it. Captivating.
Their prices are OK — not too expensive. The Indian contract staff at my office told me that they had recently lowered their prices because at one point it was very expensive. For instance, the Biryani is $12 now. It used to be $14-$15.
A few days before my visit, I mentioned about Dakshin on vanchow. Someone took a look at their menu and pointed out that they even have Chinese (eg. Chicken Corn Soup) and North Indian food (eg. Butter Chicken) on their menu … that kind of watered down Dakshin’s claim to being authentic Hyderabad. So I just HAD to take this “issue” up with our waiter. He laughed and told us that he just had to put in a bit of everything to cater to more people’s taste — a fact of life in Vancouver’s restaurants.

Other than the Biryani, the other highly recommended dish from my colleagues at work is the Chicken 65. This is one interesting dish.
Chicken 65 is traditionally eaten as an appetizer. But what an appetizer. This is $9 but there are so much chicken in this that you might as well have this as an entree.
The origin of the name Chicken 65 is interesting. There are no such thing as a Chicken 64 or a Chicken 66 and yet in Indian if you ask for Chicken 65, everyone knows what it is. Don’t try to ask them why the name because everyone would have their own version on how the name came about.
So I checked this up in Wikipedia. Here are some of the possible origins:
- It is made with 65 ingredients
- It is made with 65 types of chili
- It originally costs 65 rupees
- Each piece should weigh 65 grams (unlikely)
- It was invented in 1965
- It takes 65 days to make the marinade
- The chicken used must be 65 days old
- The most interesting one is this. Some Indian troops from the north were stationed in the southern part of the country. They couldn’t speak the local language but they love the item #65 on the menu of this particular restaurant. So they always ordered Chicken 65.
Like I said, there is no Chicken 64 or Chicken 66. However, the waiter told me that there is a Mutton 56. LOL!
Lovely, is how I would simply describe Chicken 65. This is a perfect appetizer with the right flavour that you don’t need this with rice or bread. The chicken is boneless and it is batter fried … so it does give a nice crunch and a light crisp but at the same time not at all like fried chicken. It is moist … spicy with a hint of tanginess. That spiciness leaves a nice lingering heat on the lips. We love it and couldn’t stop munching on them.

THIS … this is what the folks in the office was raving about.
And I want to say up front that I never had Biryani this good. The name is Hyderabadi Dum Ki Lamb Biryani and it is $11. If you come to this restaurant, this is the only dish you need to order if you just want only one thing. You can have the chicken version but lamb is the way to go.
The million dollar question I had to the waiter was “So what makes this so great?”. His eyes brightened up and went on to explain that there is nothing like this on this earth (he he he … don’t they always say that?). He explained in such minute details in such quick speed that some of it went swoosh over our head.
Here is what makes it such a big deal: (more…)