A few days ago, I found myself on the City of Abbotsford’s cultural diversity bus tour with my friend Wendy Mc. The first stop was Cedar Park Place in Clearbrook, a largely South Asian strip mall that has, for years, at once intrigued and intimidated me.

Offered pork spring rolls from the Vietnamese Pho place right at the end of one of the two ‘strips’ of mall, Wendy (a vegan) and myself (a pescetarian), gaily headed off to more veg-friendly pastures. The signage for a ‘vegetarian bakery’ caught our eye, and are we ever lucky that we ventured in!

To our delight, we found samosas that are baked instead of fried (imagine a flaky blueberry turnover, but filled with savoury Indian goodies). At $1 each, they are triple the going rate of samosas in the rest of the mall, but they should be charged out at three times as much again.

On that first visit, we enjoyed potato samosas. Today, I gobbled a paneer samosa, which is also filled with onions and peppers, and a yellow curry. It’s pictured below: check out the textures!

We are lucky to live among so many South Asian culinary gems. Abbotsford’s Manohar Vegetarian Bakery is surely among these!