We don’t know anyone who doesn’t like a good samosa, and a New West resident is on a little journey featuring the tasty Indian savoury pastry, while telling meaningful and fun stories and rediscovering his own culture.
Daily Hive caught up with Jeevin Johal, who began his Surrey Samosa Series journey at the start of this year. His profile picture is the classic Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon album cover, just with a samosa instead of the iconic prism.
It’s fitting, because a lot of his samosa stories are quite psychedelic.
“I had a very non-traditional childhood,” Johal told us. While the standard triangle samosa has three sides, Johal is showing that there are other sides to the classic savoury treat.
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That’s part of what makes this journey so interesting. Johal spent much of his life in Alberta, moving to B.C. in his twenties, but he didn’t have the typical experience many brown kids had. His parents weren’t playing Punjabi or Bollywood music; he recalls them listening to Rod Stewart.
It’s not that Johal’s life was completely devoid of Indian culture prior to this journey. He actually even took university courses at the U of A on the Tabla, a traditional Indian drum. He’s just seeing way more of it now.
Johal’s also humble about his samosa journey so far, refraining from calling himself an expert on the tasty snack.
“I think they say you have to eat 10,000 samosas before you’re an expert, so I don’t know if I’m there yet.”
We asked Johal if there’s anything specific he’s looking for in a so-called “good samosa.”
He explained that most samosas have relatively the same recipe but that sometimes there’s a little bit of a twist on it.
“I’m more focused on the environment. What’s going on around me.”
He still does judge samosas on some basic attributes, like crunch, spice, tang.
“Sometimes they’re too spicy, sometimes they’re not spicy enough. Sometimes they’re a little bit soft or overfried.”
He calls his first review his most memorable. It was at Pak Punjab Sweet and Samosa House located at 96th Avenue in Surrey.
“The aunties really knocked it outta the cricket grounds with this one. In terms of structural integrity, the fold game was seriously tight. A near-perfect equilateral with next to zero spillage. Not a single pea went rogue during my dining experience,” he wrote in his first Samosa Series blurb.
He also praised the price point at Pak, just $1 per samosa.
His more recent reviews, like the one he did at Samosa Time 11 Sweets, are more indicative of his writing flair.
“Ripe with the smell of diesel fuel and fresh fertilizer, sweet Abby is situated in the heart of the Fraser Valley, and borders Canada’s 11th province, America,” Johal wrote.
He’s not afraid to be honest either.
“The uneven fry caused certain quadrants to burn, leaving a bitter and acrid taste on the palate,” he said of 11 Sweets’ take on the samosa.
You can’t have a samosa without chutney, and Johal says it’s a very important part of the experience.
‘I always wanted to be a samosa reviewer’
We got to see Johal work his samosa magic first hand with a visit to Sweet Cherubim on Commercial Drive.
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Sweet Cherubim has a huge assortment of different samosas, and we chose three, including one each of the baked and fried chickpea and rice, and then a more classic potato and pea-style samosa.
“These things were plump! I’m talkin’ thicker than my cousin after inhaling a bucket of gulab juman at my sista’s, best friend’s, cousin’s wedding puja,” he wrote in his animated review.
“As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a samosa reviewer,” his review added.
When I was chatting with Johal, he recalled the moment he realized this would be a journey for him.
“It was like that scene in A Beautiful Mind, all the math equations are going. I just had words like turmeric and cumin flashing through my brain and thought this could be a fun little silly writing project.”
Johal, who has some writing experience, thought it could be a good way to start writing again. But it has since become more about exploring his roots.
“Now it’s become, I’m going to go to these places, learn about them, talk to the people that work there. It’s turned into more about me learning a little bit about my culture.”
Johal would eventually love to write a samosa cookbook featuring some of the places he’s visited.
We had to ask Johal what the best and worst samosa he had was, and he was kind enough not to throw anyone under the bus but also kind of did. We won’t name names, but he got a samosa from a food truck on Salt Spring Island that was made with rice paper and seared. He said it was not a great texture, feeling gummy.
A gummy samosa does not sound yummy.
For the best? He gave a shoutout to Krispy Samosa, particularly because it has a gluten-free option as well.
We talked about Surrey a little bit and how it gets a bad rep sometimes, but Johal is astounded by how much culture he has discovered in the growing city.
“It’s generations of families that are working there,” he said, adding that he would love to paint Surrey in a more positive light through the Samosa Series.
“There’s a lot of depth; there are stories and lineage. If you go back [to the same place] twice, it’s the same people that are there from open to close.”
Thanks to his Samosa Series, Johal has been both been able to reconnect with his culture, but also pay homage to these establishments that are celebrating it every day.
Johal pointed out that food is an important part of the culture for so many communities, and this was the window for him to get more acquainted with his own on this journey.
Finally, we asked Johal for his top three samosa joints.
He started with Pak in Surrey, since that’s when he had the lightning bolt moment and because it’s so cheap, then mentioned Samosa House, also in Surrey, which does interesting flavours like the butter chicken samosa, and finally, again, Krispy Samosa.
If you have a favourite samosa, let us know in the comments.