Curry and soy may not seem like obvious bedfellows, but in Indian-Chinese cooking they come together to create a fiery, palate-pleasing match. “Our cooking flavours the taste buds like a symphony, like firecrackers,” says Winston Liang, co-owner of Green Lettuce, an Indian-Chinese restaurant he claims was the first of its kind in Vancouver.

Indian-Chinese, or Desi Chinese, food dates back to the late 18th century, when primarily Hakka-speaking labourers began migrating from China to Calcutta (now Kolkata). They worked in tanneries, started beauty salons, and opened restaurants catering to Indian diners seeking spicy Chinese cuisine.

Liang is part of the third generation of his family born in India, and he explains that Indian-Chinese food is “a fusion” of Chinese cooking techniques and Indian spicing. “The thing is that we are Chinese,” he says over the phone. “We have mastered the techniques of stir-frying, and we infuse it with Indian spices because we come from India. We take the best of both worlds.” When Liang came to Canada, he wanted to differentiate his venture from the Cantonese restaurants that dominated Vancouver. He opened a location at 1949 Kingsway in 1999 and a Surrey branch (112–6350 120 Street) in 2003.

The menu in Surrey includes a few familiar Indian selections like samosas, butter chicken, and paneer, but the majority are Chinese-style dishes with a spicy twist. The masala chicken ($14.50), for example, consists of stir-fried strips of chicken, green and red pepper, and onion, all made hot with a house-made paste of ginger, garlic, masala, cumin, and tandoori spices. The spicy dry prawns ($16.50) deliver their own punch with a chili garlic sauce that will have you reaching for your water.

Spicing is liberal because this type of cooking caters to heat-tolerant
Indian palates. Newbies can, of course, opt to have the heat level toned down. As well, the menu offers many vegetarian options and bypasses the pork dishes that are common in
Chinese cuisine. “We serve a big section of the Muslim population, and we try to be more appealing to our Muslim clients,” Liang says.

Yung Chiu, partner in Asian Spice (9436 120 Street, Surrey) and another third-generation Chinese Indian, points out that popular Chinese vegetables like bok choy are also missing from this type of cooking. “We don’t use leafy vegetables. We use more cauliflower, peppers, and cabbage. It is just a preference in India. They are more accustomed to those kinds of vegetables,” he says during a phone interview.

Chiu uses green peppers in his deep-fried chili chicken ($10.50), along with stir-fried onion and green chilies. The chicken arrives nicely crisp, its flavours heightened by the zippy heat of the chilies. The house fish ($14) is another marriage of textures and tastes that draws on the intense flavour of Indian spices. “The house fish is marinated with tandoori powder and then deep-fried. We then sauté it with onion and curry leaves. It has a distinct curry-leaf flavour and aroma,” Chiu says.

Like most Indian-Chinese restaurants, Asian Spice makes use of tandoori flavours as well as Manchurian sauce, a unique mélange named for an area in northeastern China. Paul Yang, owner of Chili Pepper House (1–3003 Kingsway; 12790 96 Avenue, Surrey) and a fellow Chinese Indian, explains over the phone that “Manchurian sauce is a mix of garlic, ginger, coriander, and all different kinds of spices. Everybody has their own creation of Manchurian sauce.”

Yang offers a Manchurian prawn dish ($14.95) consisting of lightly breaded prawns that are deep-fried until golden and then mixed with Manchurian sauce. His other recommendations include stir-fried green beans ($8.25) that up the heat quotient with generous lacings of spices, chili, and garlic. The house-special chicken ($13.50) is also lively on the taste buds, its strips of chicken breast stir-fried with fresh chilies and green and yellow onions.

After such robust flavours, the best way to end an Indian-Chinese meal is with cooling spoonfuls of kulfi (a type of Indian ice cream) or rasmalai (sweetened cottage cheese or paneer in thickened milk). Both are refreshing finishes to a mixed cuisine that is rapidly gaining popularity outside of India and even made it onto Saveur magazine’s list of 100 favourite foods this year.

“I think people are into the spices that we use. The first day that we opened the restaurant here, people were really curious. When we used the term Indian-Chinese food, they were attracted to it,” Yang says. So head to where the woks and the chilies are hot, and get ready for a ride through the blended offerings of two Asian culinary traditions.