Something healthy for everyone at Grill Station in Sutherland
Businesses and non-profit organizations regularly open and move in Saskatoon. Today the StarPhoenix talks to Kami Sadiq and his wife Saba Kamran.
The couple opened Grill Station in Sutherland in late December. Located close to the Sutherland railway tracks, their decor and menu items are railway-themed.
Sadiq has a background in banking and finance after coming to Saskatoon from Pakistan two years ago. He followed his wife who arrived three years ago with a food and educational background.
In Pakistan, the couple had helped the poor and homeless people in their city by giving them food. Kamran also cooked and published a menu of the day that would sell out before she had even made the food.
Q: Why did you open Grill Station?
Sadiq: I’ve been talking to a lot of people who have a wish for grilled food. There is lots of fried food (in restaurants), but personally I am not very fond of fried food. So I saw a niche in that market. And then a lot of people I spoke to said they wanted to have some kosher options as well. We also use only the best of the best ingredients. The entire idea was to cater to the needs of the community and set up a place which is more of a community place. We have an inclusive menu and want to invite everybody. We don’t want to turn anybody away for any reason because of their faith, age or any diet restrictions. If you are a vegetarian you can come here, if you have allergy issues we will try to cater to your needs.
Q: What stands out about your burgers?
Kamran: All of our recipes for every single burger are very carefully crafted. For the past six months we’ve spent a fortune making different burgers at home to try different recipes. If you look at our menu, you would not find all of these burgers on a single menu anywhere — maybe in a five-star restaurant. You would not see a
Mediterranean
Steamline with feta and olive. You would not find pulled chicken and pulled beef burgers with barbecue sauces and all. These are different burgers that stand out. And every burger comes with a choice of a homemade sauce, which is not at any extra cost. What we bring to Saskatoon is variety to choose from and yet connecting with everyone.
Q: What are some of your popular menu items?
Sadiq: One of the items that we are selling the most is our Grill Station masterpiece burger. It comes with three different proteins. It has a beef patty, it has pulled beef or pulled chicken and it has beef bacon. And then we add mozzarella sticks to it. It’s a big fat burger. You have your choice of regular, gluten-free or charcoal buns, as with any of our burgers. And we pull our beef and chicken in house. It’s a very long process that takes about 10 to 12 hours just to make our beef and pulled chicken because you have to slow cook it.
Another one that people are loving is our wings. These wings go with homemade sauces and they are grilled, they are not fried. Most of the wings you get in the market are fried. We have big wings with a lot of meat on them. The other ones in the market will have a lot of skin on them. Our wings come with a healthy portion of protein. It’s a complete meal.
Our grilled chicken breast is also popular. They are marinated in house. We add a lot of herbs and lemons and oranges and we dip them into our own special brine for some time and then they are marinated for a good four or five hours. Then we grill them. We offer the grilled chicken with a variety of homemade sauces. We offer all the levels of hotness up to extra hot spice. If you can’t tolerate spices, we offer it in homemade butter lemon garlic sauce which is made to order.
Q: How are your meals prepared?
Sadiq: The moment you order our burgers is when we start cooking it fresh. The average time for every burger takes about 8 to 9 minutes. We are not McDonalds or Popeyes. Our veggies are grilled. Our sauces are made fresh. The process takes time. We are not fast food. What we are trying to do is give you good food as fast as we can. That is our motto. We want everybody in the city to try our food and decide if they want to come back.
Q: What unique drinks do you serve?
Sadiq: One of my favourites is our orange drink. That drink is made out of real oranges. We also add vitamin C to it. And then we blend it and serve. It’s delicious and very refreshing. We have a lot of choice for lemonades and ice cream shakes and cold coffees.
One of the drinks I brought from back home in the northern part of Pakistan. Over there, people drink a special kind of tea called Pink Tea. It’s made out of special herbs. There is cardamom, cinnamon and tea leaves. Then we brew it for over two hours. It’s very good for your digestive system. It’s low in calories but it provides you a lot of energy.
Q: Do you offer desserts?
Sadiq: We source our desserts very carefully from Saskatoon. We have warm brownies served with cold ice cream. It’s a very good combination. That is one of our most loved desserts. We also have cream puffs. They are bite sized. They are not heavy and they are not hard on the stomach. But they are stuffed with some good whipped cream. And we top it with our own chocolate syrup. One other is cinnamon buns. We top them up with our own cream cheese icing for the topping. And we also offer a gluten-free brownie.
Q: You cater to different diets and dietary restrictions?
Sadiq: All of our products are kosher. We have introduced beef bacon because a lot of people don’t eat pork but they love bacon. For vegetarians we have veggie options. We have patties that taste like beef, but they are 100 per cent made out of vegetables. Those are one of the few things that I don’t make myself. And we have vegan burgers and vegan rice bowls.
Kamran: We have different sauces for everyone. We have a chart of sauces that are dairy free, gluten free, wheat free, soy free, egg free, nut free.
Q: Where do your products come from?
Sadiq: We are trying to support Saskatchewan as much as possible. We have made an extra effort and if we can’t find it in Saskatchewan, we want everything to be from Canada. We offer charcoal buns but you don’t find them in Saskatchewan so we had to source them from BC. Even for our POS system, we went with TD when 99.9 per cent of POS operators are based out of the U.S. We want to be Canadian as much as possible.
Q: Tell me about your railway theme?
Sadiq: Right behind our restaurant there is a railway track. Sutherland was the first cargo and passenger railway station in Saskatchewan. This was a railway hub. Gradually they have taken it out, but some of the parts are still here. The kids of today’s day don’t know about this so I wanted to bring that feeling.
Secondly, as a child I was very fascinated with trains. I wanted to go into trains. Back home we used to have steam engines 30 or 40 years back. I love those. They were slower and noisy. They were not like bullet trains. That was one of the things that I always enjoyed.
Q: You also offer catering services?
Kamran: We cater to large numbers from our menu. People will get a discount if they want us to cater. We can easily cater up to 300 burgers and fries.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Grill Station
Owners:
Kami Sadiq & Saba Kamran
Address:
821 Central Avenue, Unit 5
Hours:
Sunday to Thursday, 11:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.; Friday & Saturday, 11:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.
Phone:
306-979-5558
Website:
www.grillstation.ca
Check:
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