Indian Food as Colourful as Chilliwack’s Mural Festival

Chilliwack’s annual Mural Festival brings amazing street art to the city every summer. Artists from across Canada paint huge murals on building walls throughout the downtown area. These colourful works tell stories and celebrate the local culture in beautiful ways. Indian cuisine creates the same kind of visual magic through traditional spices and cooking methods.

At Shandhar Hut, every dish becomes a colourful work of art on your plate. The bright colours come from authentic spices that have been used for thousands of years. Like murals that catch your attention from across the street, these dishes grab your eye immediately. Both art forms bring communities together and help people celebrate their cultural backgrounds and traditions.

Spices That Paint Your Plate

Walk through downtown Chilliwack during mural festival season and you’ll see how artists use bright colours to create amazing artwork. Our kitchen works the same way, but we use spices instead of paint. We work with golden turmeric, bright red paprika, and deep purple eggplant to create dishes that look as good as they taste.

Golden Turmeric: The Artist’s Warm Yellow

Turmeric gives our butter chicken and many other curries their sunny yellow colour. This spice has been used in Indian cooking for thousands of years. It doesn’t just make food look beautiful – it’s also really good for your health. When you see that bright yellow colour in your curry, you’re looking at the same kind of artistic choice that mural painters make when they want to show warmth and happiness.

Bright Red Spices: Bold Statement Colours

Saffron is the most expensive spice we use in our kitchen. Just like mural artists use special paints for important details, we save saffron for our most special dishes. The red colours in our tandoori chicken come from paprika, cayenne, and traditional food colouring. These spices turn regular chicken into something that looks amazing and tastes even better.

Fresh Greens and Earthy Browns

Our green chutneys and spinach curries look just like the fresh green colours you see in nature murals. These dishes capture the same energy that artists put into painting trees and grass. Even our darker spices like roasted cumin and garam masala work like the neutral colours in paintings – they help make the brighter colours stand out.

Cultural Storytelling Through Food and Art

Every mural tells a story, and so does every dish that comes out of our kitchen. Indian cooking carries stories that go back thousands of years, just like the murals around Chilliwack often show both local history and universal human experiences.

Take our chicken tikka for example. This isn’t just grilled chicken – it has a real story behind it. Legend says a Mughal emperor broke his tooth on a bone in regular tandoori chicken. His cooks solved the problem by removing the bones first, creating what we now call chicken tikka. Every piece represents how people adapt and create new things while still honouring old traditions.

Our aloo gobi tells the story of farmers in Punjab who created filling meals from their harvest. The combination of potato and cauliflower shows the practical wisdom of people who knew how to make simple ingredients taste amazing. When Chilliwack artists paint scenes of local farming, they’re showing the same connection between land and food that inspired this classic dish.

The story behind paneer tikka goes back to vegetarian traditions that are centuries old. This grilled cottage cheese dish proves that vegetarian food can be just as satisfying and flavourful as any meat dish. For festival-goers who don’t eat meat, paneer tikka offers all the taste and satisfaction they’re looking for.

Fueling Chilliwack’s Artists and Festival-Goers

During mural festival season, Chilliwack gets busy with creative energy. Artists work long hours in the summer heat, volunteers help coordinate everything, and visitors explore every corner of downtown. All this activity makes people hungry, and that’s where Shandhar Hut comes in.

Our takeout options work perfectly for people on the move during festival time. Grab some of our samosas – crispy pastries filled with spiced potatoes – and eat them easily while exploring. Our curry containers are great because they travel well and are convenient for eating on the go.

Our service hours work well with festival schedules. Our lunch specials give mural tour groups the perfect midday break. Our evening hours let festival-goers sit down and relax over dinner after spending the day looking at art. Since our downtown location is so close to the mural areas, we’ve become a natural meeting spot for artists, volunteers, and visitors.

We’ve noticed that many Chilliwack residents love the international flavours of our cuisine during festival season. Just like murals often show influences from different cultures, our community appreciates authentic flavours that tell stories from different parts of the world. Our tandoori tofu has become really popular with local residents who eat plant-based diets but still want bold flavours and good protein.

Your Festival Food Stop

Shandhar Hut’s downtown location makes us the perfect home base for your mural festival experience. While we also serve the community from our Sardis location, our downtown restaurant is especially convenient for festival-goers. You can easily walk to us from the mural areas or drive between different art sites throughout the city. Our restaurant has comfortable seating for groups planning their festival routes or artists taking breaks from their work.

During festival weekends, we stay open longer to handle the extra visitors and people who want to eat dinner later. Our happy hour specials give festival attendees great value so they can enjoy more of what the festival has to offer. You can try smaller portions of our most popular dishes and creative cocktails while still having room for more festival exploring.

The Chilliwack Mural Festival, supported by organisations like the British Columbia Arts Council and Tourism Chilliwack, gets bigger every year. Artists and visitors come from all across Canada and beyond. As this cultural celebration grows, Shandhar Hut stays committed to supporting the arts community by providing food that matches the festival’s creative energy and cultural diversity.

Whether you’re a local resident enjoying the city’s cultural events, a festival volunteer helping coordinate activities, or a visitor exploring Chilliwack’s growing reputation as a cultural destination, we welcome you with the same warmth that characterises both Indian hospitality and Canadian community spirit. Come see how art meets appetite in the heart of Chilliwack.

Ready to taste the colours of authentic Indian cuisine? Book a reservation or order online today.

Downtown Chilliwack – 8835 Young Road, Chilliwack, BC – (604) 793-0188 Ext 1

Sardis Location – 6050 Chilliwack River Road, Chilliwack, BC – (604) 793-0188 Ext 2