A Taste of Wellness: Inside Surya Chai’s plant-based mission

AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

Re­porter

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

As many Trin­bag­o­ni­ans spend the Cor­pus Christi hol­i­day in deep spir­i­tu­al re­flec­tion, Surya Chai Well­ness Cafe of­fers an op­por­tu­ni­ty to think more deeply about the re­la­tion­ship be­tween food, well­ness, and mind­ful liv­ing all year round.

Through a menu built around plant-based and or­gan­ic in­gre­di­ents, cafe own­er Mar­lene De­osaran has made it her life’s work and mis­sion to en­cour­age peo­ple to be more in­ten­tion­al, not on­ly about how they live, but al­so about how they eat.

It is an un­ex­pect­ed lifestyle, and one she nev­er orig­i­nal­ly in­tend­ed to adopt.

“When I was 16, my moth­er de­cid­ed that she was not cook­ing meat at home any­more. So we had to ei­ther fall in line, or go out­side to eat,” Mar­lene told Guardian Me­dia.

As the youngest of six chil­dren, Mar­lene said she fell in­to the rou­tine eas­i­ly, as no one else at home had any is­sues adopt­ing the new di­etary habit.

“She had made that step for both re­li­gious and health rea­sons. And we felt the dif­fer­ence in our own bod­ies when we gave up the meat. So it was easy to con­tin­ue.”

How­ev­er, life lat­er in­flu­enced her to make fur­ther di­etary changes.

“In my ear­ly 20s, I re­alised I had a prob­lem as­sim­i­lat­ing cow’s milk. Based on that, now I had to seek food that did not con­tain that. I had a lot of ac­ne. I had a lot of pain in my kid­neys and stuff like that. And it turned out that when I came off cow’s milk, those things cleared up. So, I mean, the proof is in the pud­ding,” she ex­plained.

Mar­lene’s busi­ness ven­ture, Surya Chai, orig­i­nal­ly got un­der­way be­cause of her love for drink­ing chai.

How­ev­er, she no­ticed that many com­mer­cial brands came pre-loaded with dairy and sweet­en­ers.

She be­gan mak­ing masala chai us­ing a spe­cial blend of lo­cal herbs and In­di­an spices, cre­at­ing teas that catered to ve­g­an, veg­e­tar­i­an, and gluten-free lifestyles. Sell­ing her prod­ucts at ar­ti­san mar­kets and events al­lowed Mar­lene to con­nect di­rect­ly with cus­tomers, many of whom fell in love with her teas and ex­pressed a de­sire for health­i­er food op­tions.

Recog­nis­ing a gap in the mar­ket, she be­gan ex­pand­ing her of­fer­ings be­yond bev­er­ages, de­vel­op­ing whole­some meals and snacks that re­flect­ed the same com­mit­ment to nat­ur­al in­gre­di­ents and in­clu­sive eat­ing. For Mar­lene, this was a nat­ur­al pro­gres­sion.

“It’s in­ter­est­ing that once you step on­to a cer­tain path, you tend to meet a lot of peo­ple along the sim­i­lar path.”

Lo­cat­ed on Roberts Street, Wood­brook, Mar­lene ex­plains that Surya Chai Well­ness Cafe is a veg­e­tar­i­an space, with about 90 per cent of the food be­ing en­tire­ly ve­g­an.

Her day-to-day plant-based dish­es com­plete­ly avoid cow’s milk, yo­ghurt, an­i­mal-based cheese, and eggs, opt­ing in­stead for plant milks such as oat, co­conut, and cashew.

Every day, she wel­comes new cus­tomers from the sur­round­ing area who are look­ing for health­i­er meal op­tions.

“We do get peo­ple com­ing across here from a few places around. They know the space for of­fer­ing whole­some or­gan­ic food and drink. So yeah. It’s def­i­nite­ly is a grow­ing mar­ket,” Mar­lene said.

On the menu that day, Mar­lene had a num­ber of lunch or­ders for the dai­ly spe­cial: gar­lic cas­sa­va, co­conut black-eyed peas, sautéed bo­di, and a sal­ad topped with sun­flower seeds, cel­ery, olives, toma­toes, cu­cum­bers, and fresh mi­cro­greens, served with a spe­cial vinai­grette dress­ing.

Mar­lene stress­es the im­por­tance of main­tain­ing strong re­la­tion­ships with lo­cal pro­duc­ers and farm­ers to en­sure her in­gre­di­ents, such as cu­cum­bers, toma­toes, sweet pep­pers, cas­sa­va, and sweet pota­toes, are both fresh and or­gan­ic.

And while some peo­ple tend to shy away from legumes, Mar­lene says she and her team have nailed the per­fect prepa­ra­tion tech­nique.

“A lot of peo­ple hes­i­tate to try be­ing veg­e­tar­i­an be­cause it re­al­ly de­pends so much on beans for pro­tein and beans are known to be gassy. But there’s a way to pre­pare them to make sure they’re not gassy. Those are the tech­niques we have em­ployed here to re­al­ly make the beans more palat­able as well as safer for the gut.”

Along­side a few per­son­al se­crets, she knows her food tastes de­li­cious and stands out for all the right rea­sons.

“What makes my food stand out? I don’t want to say it is love, be­cause then it will sound too cliche. But I do en­joy what I do,” she said.

“There’s an­oth­er lit­tle hid­den el­e­ment in prepar­ing food. Spices like cin­na­mon, star anise, clove, car­damom. These are things I use in a lot of our dish­es. They’re not over­whelm­ing. But they pro­vide a sub­tle depth of flavour to most of the dish­es. I’ve told you my se­cret now.”

While she of­fers “sweet­er” treats that are gluten-free or ve­g­an, such as muffins, choco­late zuc­chi­ni cake, cas­sa­va brown­ies, and al­mond car­rot cake cook­ies, savoury meals like her mush­room sand­wich, made with sour­dough bread and home­made sauces, are al­so a huge hit, along with her piz­za.

While many seek out Mar­lene’s cafe for per­son­al health rea­sons, she has no­ticed a shift­ing de­mo­graph­ic, par­tic­u­lar­ly among young peo­ple look­ing for or­gan­ic op­tions.

Whether it is a pass­ing trend or not, Mar­lene be­lieves peo­ple will ex­pe­ri­ence the phys­i­cal ben­e­fits just as she did, re­al­is­ing they can eas­i­ly main­tain their pro­tein in­take with­out meat. Her goal at Surya Chai Well­ness Cafe is to en­sure healthy food ap­peals to all the hu­man sens­es, fo­cus­ing on tex­ture, aro­ma, taste, and pre­sen­ta­tion.

“I think that is a big fear that most peo­ple have, that it will nev­er fill them, it will nev­er sat­is­fy them, you know. Be­cause if it doesn’t have the meat on the plate, it will nev­er sat­is­fy,” Mar­lene said.

“I love when they say, ‘Well, I didn’t miss the meat.’ That’s my favourite one.”

When asked what ad­vice she would give to any­one try­ing to tran­si­tion to a health­i­er di­et, Mar­lene’s re­sponse was di­rect, warm, and nat­ur­al.

“Come true. We got you.”