From a dishwasher to owner of 4 bistros.

Cannot speak English or French.

Read his bistro review.

The critic raves about the portion size in his Italian-French bistro.

A true success story.

http://www.toronto.com/article/715628--vivetha-bistro-review


Mar 06, 2012
ViVetha Bistro

(out of 4) GOOD

Address: 2485 Queen St. E. (near Victoria Park Ave.), 416-686-5688, vivethabistro.com

Chef: Siva Thambinathan

Hours: Daily, 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Reservations: Recommended

Wheelchair access: No

Price: Dinner for two with wine, tax and tip: $70

Siva Thambinathan is clearly doing something right.

ViVetha Bistro’s chef/owner is packing them in nightly at his six-year-old Beaches dining room. Even on a Wednesday, when nearby restaurants are empty, ViVetha is turning away those without reservations. (They get takeout instead.)

With the possible exception of The Green Eggplant, it is the busiest restaurant on the stretch of Queen St. that runs east of Woodbine Ave. to the TTC streetcar loop.

And this is just one of Thambinathan’s four Italian-French restaurants. He opened another ViVetha at Yonge and Lawrence 18 months ago, farther afield from two ViPei Bistro locations on Kingston Rd. He named the restaurants after his 14-year-old daughter, Vivetha, and 17-year-old son, Vipeijan. The extra capital letters are for better graphics and ease of pronounciation.

So what is the secret to the Sri Lankan-born restaurateur’s success?

I figured out part of it while sitting in the newly redecorated dining room, taking in the tiled walls, warm red paint and handsomely framed vintage French posters.

First off is the cozy vibe. The dining room seats 40 people.

Second, prices are low. Pastas average $14, most entrées are $16 and a bottle of Wolf Blass Cabernet Merlot is $35, about double its LCBO price.

Then there are the portions. I haven’t seen servings this big outside of America.

Appetizers could easily sub as entrées, like the half-kilo of steamed mussels ($11) sprinkled with gorgonzola, a surprisingly harmonious combination that balances the cheese’s saltiness against the inherent sweetness of the bivalves.

Never mind the heft of such nightly specials as a five-rib rack of lamb ($30). The side vegetables alone are daunting. One night, I counted 14 kinds of grilled vegetables alongside my otherwise unremarkable veal scaloppini ($16). And not cheap produce, but gourmet varieties like purple heirloom carrots, baby zucchini, radicchio and Jerusalem artichokes. Downtown chefs garnish plates with one or two such gems. ViVetha seemingly shovels them on.

Staff cheerfully package leftovers, writing messages like “midnight snack” and “tomorrow’s lunch” on the lids.

Still, the night when three of us collect five doggie bags brings our server up short.

“That’s got to be the record,” she says of the stacked containers on the table.

It’s our first visit and we’re unprepared for the food blitz. We nibble at anchovy-forward Caesar salad ($6.50) and filler-free crab cakes ($13). Even so, there’s little room for the mound of seafood linguini ($16), pile of penne ($16) and rack of ribs ($16) that follow. It hardly matters if the seafood is adequately cooked or the bourbon-glazed honey-garlic ribs taste like boozy Chinese food. We can’t finish. (Of the penne — a kitchen-sink concoction of chicken, shrimp, bristly leeks, cashews and orange segments in cream sauce — I stop at two bites because it reminds me of bad ’80s food. It’s the rare slip from the otherwise solid kitchen.)

Even on a second visit, I’m shocked by the half-lobster sticking out of a $26 pasta special that also includes fat shrimp and firm salmon. Clearly, they’re working on volume here.

But by the dessert sampler ($10), with its mousse-like chocolate cheesecake, gooey chocolate pecan pie and church-suppery key lime pie, I know to expect the gobs of whipped cream, squiggles of caramel sauce and abundance of drizzled chocolate.

Sorbet ($4) served in a hollowed lemon is the only bit of minimalism on the extensive menu. That and the old-school Wint-O-Green Life Savers that come with the bill.

I get the value-for-money appeal of ViVetha. But there’s more to the dishwasher-turned-restaurateur’s success. Thambinathan, 49, reports sales of $20,000 a week at this location. He takes customer feedback seriously and uses loss leaders, taking a hit on each crab cake.

He avoids middlemen when purchasing, sending his wife to buy liquor and stocking up himself at Costco and the Ontario Food Terminal. The restaurant generates 5 per cent profit, above the provincial pre-tax average of 2.3 per cent.

“We’re not looking at a huge profit margin here. We just want to survive,” says general manager Karan Rasiah, Thambinathan’s cousin and Tamil-English interpreter.

They’re already eyeing a fifth location, possibly in Port Union.



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Sunny Leone a true Canadian DESI now back in India !.