After nearly 30 years in business, the family-run ByWard Market restaurant Shafali closed on Aug. 31, in a reckoning with ongoing financial struggles that its owner called “devastating.”
“It’s a very difficult time for us. I’m losing sleep over it,” said Gias “Salim” Uddin, who opened the Indian restaurant on Dalhousie Street in 1996.
“We had to make this decision,” the 66-year-old said. “Shafali’s been in trouble since the pandemic … The bills were piling up. The sales were not great. We’re not as young as we used to be.”
His 19-year-old son began working a few years ago at Shafali, which is named after Uddin’s mother, the family’s matriarch. “He had hoped he could continue to keep the legacy going. He’s very sad,” Uddin added.
However, a smaller offshoot business called Shafali Bazaar, which opened in the ByWard Market Square building in 1998, is staying open.
That more casual, grab-and-go vendor is still viable, Uddin said, because its food is cheaper and sells in greater volume. In particular, the Bazaar does brisk business selling Uddin’s creations called tikka wraps, which combine curries and naan into a handheld meal.
Tikka wraps, which range in price from $11.30 to $16 depending on the protein involved, “basically saved us,” Uddin said.
“Thank God we created that item. We are very proud of it,” he said.
Shafali on Dalhousie is the latest long-standing ByWard Market restaurant to close.
Dunn’s Famous Deli,
a block south on Dalhousie,
closed in March
.
The restaurants
Oz Kafe
, the
Courtyard Restaurant
and Mamma Grazzi’s Kitchen, all tenants in National Capital Commission heritage buildings, suddenly closed last year.
Blue Cactus Bar and Grill closed after its 2024 New Year’s Eve party
.
Owners of these restaurants, including Uddin, cited common complaints, such as the hollowing out of Ottawa’s downtown after the COVID-19 pandemic sent workers to their home offices.
However, recently opened restaurants such as
Grey’s Social Kitchen,
Ember
and the Filipino dessert shop
Sweet Puspin
suggest that some entrepreneurs still believe the ByWard Market could be a prime location.
Uddin added that Shafali faced another pressure that had less impact on most ByWard Market restaurants, namely
the proliferation in recent years of Indian restaurants across Ottawa, as the city’s South Asian population has grown.
“The competition became fierce,” he said. When Shafali opened, Ottawa might have had just a few dozen Indian restaurants, he said. Now he can’t even guess how many there are. “Maybe 100 to 150? In the ByWard Market, you have six or seven (Indian restaurants) right now.”
Still, Uddin hasn’t counted out launching a new business at his Dalhousie Street address. While he doesn’t own the building, he says his lease is a good one and perhaps he can make a different concept work.
Similarly, the nearby restaurant
Fairouz Cafe closed in April
so that its owners could open a steakhouse called Sussex & Co., a cocktail bar called Little Sussex and a burger place called Burger Bar in its Clarence Street space.
Uddin owns two other ByWard Market eateries,
La La Noodle
, a Chinese restaurant on George Street, and the new Peruvian restaurant Tayanti, which opened on Clarence Street in August where the pizzeria Il Vicolo had been. Uddin was also involved with that business, he said.
“I still have a lot of fire left in me,” Uddin said.
Uddin came to Canada from Bangladesh as a teenager. He entered the food and hospitality industry when he was 19, after moving from Montreal to Ottawa to work at the Westin Ottawa hotel, which was then just opening.
He has used his businesses to assist a charity called Child Haven International and says his ancestral home in Bangladesh has been turned into a home for 120 children.
“Shafali was a big source of revenue for our foundation. I have to find a way to do something,” Uddin said.
“There are populations in this world who have very little opportunity,” he said. “It only makes sense that we are able to, if we can, share some of our fortune.”
