Millions of eyes are feasting on a restaurant in Toronto, known to serve up delicious Eastern flavour and endless bouts of laughter with their TikTok videos.
Sitting at 560 Parliament Street is Butter Chicken Factory, a family-run Indian cuisine eatery that has seen viral success for their trendy social media videos. Their top viewed post sits at 7.7 million views on TikTok and nearly 750,000 likes.
The videos often star restaurant owner Bhuv Malik, who commenters have affectionately dubbed “Uncle,” as well as other staff members in short, creative skits and scenarios.
Malik opened the sole Butter Chicken Factory location in June 2011, a long-time aspiration he says he had hoped to achieve after immigrating to Canada.
“My background is from the hotel industry… I always had a dream to go into the food and beverage industry and open a restaurant – my own restaurant,” Malik told Now Toronto.
“I wanted something of my own, rather than slogging for other people.”
Dal makhani and paneer tikka masala are a few must-have specialty dishes that Butter Chicken Factory has to offer, but Malik says their staple dish – butter chicken, of course – knocks the entire menu out of the park. From butter chicken poutines to butter chicken platters topped with 24-karat gold leaves, the restaurant surely lives up to its name.
Malik runs the restaurant alongside his son, Suhas, and daughter-in-law, Virinda Dembla, who also have cameos in some of their most popular videos.
Dembla, who is usually behind the lens, says that her favourite video is one that showcases her and Malik in a classic misunderstanding gag, where a request for more food replacement options for her husband leads to him bringing out an array of eligible male suitors instead.
That video, filled with comments of users bamboozled by the unexpected plot twist, has more than 2.5 million views.
Dembla credits herself and Suhas as the masterminds behind the viral videos, which stemmed from not only the desire to provide an extension to the hilarious skits they made on their personal social media accounts, but wanting to highlight the business in a unique way following a hard-hitting impact on foot traffic due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The lockdown had just begun, and the restaurant industry was just facing an entirely new market because dine-in was closed,” Dembla explained.
“We thought, why not take that side of us, and showcase it in the restaurant as well? Because it’s about time the restaurant also has a personality! And by being active on social media, people are able to understand what the restaurant is about.”
And while Malik isn’t always up to date on the latest Gen Z-esque internet trends, he says he’s happy to take charge as being a familiar face, a role that is just as important.
“It’s what happens when the young and the old people meet. Somebody becomes a face, and somebody becomes the brains,” he laughed.
The videos have been well-received thus far, reaching people far beyond Toronto borders. From frequently getting recognized locally, to having people all the way in Saskatchewan ready to make the trek for a taste of butter chicken, Malik and Dembla say that the response all-around has been heartwarming.
“I’m there in the restaurant in the evening just to say hello to everyone. I was standing outside just two days ago and two ladies said, ‘I saw you on TikTok!’ I said ‘OK, good. Thank you very much,’” Malik said.
“It’s sort of translated into business as well. I’ve seen a few of our guests order online, and they add notes like ‘Hey, uncle, we saw your videos on Tiktok. We would love to support a local business!’ And obviously, that just made our day,” Dembla added.
While Butter Chicken Factory looks forward to hopefully expanding their locations someday, the pair assure that putting their all into their Parliament Street homebase is the main focus for now. As they continue to dish out the self-proclaimed best butter chicken in Cabbagetown, Dembla says the hilarious videos will also live on, and urges other local restaurants to follow suit.
“We would definitely want to expand, but we personally believe that if a particular place has more potential, we would love for it to reach that. And we think that we can definitely do a lot more with this one location,” she explained.
“This market has just become a lot more than just about food. I think it’s time for restaurants to actually just showcase their personality, instead of just those food shots or ambience shots and basically just turn everything into a meme! It’s more share-worthy, it’s more hilarious, it’s more relatable!”
