The new owners of Yellowknife’s Shawarma House – Milan Singh, Sandy Rai and Gaurav Arora – are planning to revamp the location into a multi-cuisine restaurant.
The restaurant’s name now appears as The Little Prince Cuisine-Shawarma House on food delivery apps after a change of ownership in early November. Singh said they’re deciding if they should stick with that name or rename themselves Blue Bell Eatery.
The previous owner, Moustafa Alhajjy, trained the incoming staff to make shawarma because he felt Yellowknife “deserves a good experience” and didn’t want people to miss out on Syrian-Lebanese cuisine once the sale was complete.
“We trained the new staff because we wanted [them to] sell the same product as we used to sell, because people of Yellowknife really loved our food,” Alhajjy told Cabin Radio on Thursday.
Singh, head chef of the new restaurant, said in the first few days they received phone calls from people specifically inquiring about shawarma.
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“When we said we don’t have it, they didn’t place an order,” he acknowledged.
“We took over the restaurant before the evacuation. We wanted to discontinue shawarma, but realized the dish has a market of its own here. People’s expectations are high when it comes to Lebanese food, so we made a decision to continue selling shawarma.”
Before moving to Yellowknife in 2020, Singh gained culinary experience working at a restaurant in Vancouver. He said that sparked his interest in cooking and he started practising at home.
The trio hope for an official launch in January after repainting the interiors from the original red to green. Besides shawarma – which will only be available at lunchtime – the new menu will offer steak, poutine, salads, East Indian curries and Indo-Chinese fusion items.
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“We want to bring these unique flavours to the North … We have a broad menu to accommodate people’s diverse taste preferences,” Singh said.
The restaurant will be open on weekends and the owners plan to bring in live music from 6:30pm till 9pm on Fridays and Saturdays. Singh said he wants people to come to the restaurant “not just for the food, but also for the experience.”
Alhajjy moved to the city with his family as a Syrian refugee in 2016 and opened Shawarma House in 2021, replacing the city’s only Indian restaurant at the time – The Ambassador. Another Indian restaurant, Masala Kingdom, opened in April this year.
“We wanted to open a business so badly because we saw that we had a chance to do so,” Alhajjy said.
“We wanted something that reminded us of back home and this was something we’re good at … It meant something special to us that people loved and supported our business.”
Alhajjy said at the moment he doesn’t have plans to open another restaurant but, because the city is “a good place for restaurant businesses,” he might reconsider in the future.
“You can get a lot of support from the lovely community,” he said.
