Vege Way: Changing the life of a vegetarian
There’s a scene in the movie “My Big, Fat, Greek Wedding” where the female protagonist’s fiancé meets her extended family for the first time in Easter.
When one of the aunts invited the couple to her house for dinner, the heroine has to explain that her fiancé is a vegetarian. The music halts and everyone turns to gape as the aunt cries out, “What do you mean, he don’t eat no meat?”
And that pretty much aggregates the life of a vegetarian or vegan which the founders of the Vege Way – Rukmal Chandrasehar and her two children set out to change.
Rukmal Chandrasehar and her daughter at the Good Market Stall. Pic by Indika Handuwala
“I had always wanted to own a restaurant, and when I became a vegan I found it very difficult to find places to eat,” Rukmal says, adding that she wanted to open a spot that would serve two worlds. It was always a dream to start ‘something’ that will cater to those not eating meat. “I wanted something that would be a place for vegetarians to eat and would also be a place where non-vegetarians could experience vegetarian cuisine with a menu that might be a little more familiar to them.”
With her girls grown up, she also had a lot of time in her hands. “My girls encouraged me a lot and pushed me into starting this in a small way,” she says, adding emotionally that they are ‘jewels’. Both Hiranya (her elder daughter) and Harithra (the younger) were behind her starting this venture, she says, adding that now its only the three of them cooking and that they take orders.
Harithra has been a vegetarian since she was three. “My mom showed me a video on slaughter,” Harithra says, joining in, adding that since then she’s been a non-meat eater. Rukmal says that she has been a vegetarian for some three decades mainly because both her parents practiced it. She says another reason to start making and baking vegetarian food items was because as a family they experienced that they didn’t have a ‘proper’ place to buy such items. “Veggie food was scarce and limited to ‘a few’ items at any eatery, which was really disappointing,” she says. So she started with what the family craved to eat. The Vege Way has Pesarattu, a healthy Indian treat made from green gram and rice flour and served with coconut chutney and a special ginger chutney.
“Whatever that felt good, we made,” Harithra says, adding that it’s a mixture of regular tasting soul food, but it’s just vegetarian. Rukmal mostly tries savoury items. “Pizza, tofu wrap, mushrooms on toast and stuffed chili with mung,” she says. For someone who didn’t know how ‘to boil an egg’ up until the time she got married 24 years ago, this is an achievement, Rukmal says, smiling.
She sells her items each Thursday at The Good Market, at the newly opened Diyatha Uyana market stalls next to the Parliament roundabout and Water’s Edge in Battaramulla. It’s already a profitable venture, she says, adding that many families come in search of them on Thursday at the Good Market. Hoping to promote her husband’s soy ice cream (which is well established in Kandy), she says, “We really want to create a health zone, to attack health from a couple of different angles in terms of the food that we provide.” She says that this too is on her ‘plate’ of things in the near future apart from expanding her little business to a fully fledged restaurant.
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