50 Reasons to Love Toronto: No.49, Dosas fresh from a tiffin

Midday in Mumbai, the streets are choked with bicycle-riding couriers carrying lunch in tiffins—stackable, reusable stainless steel containers. Mumbai is nothing like lunchtime in Toronto, when cubicle drones descend into food courts and stand in line for lumpy servings of salty carbs and icky meats drizzled with vaguely ethnic sauces. Luckily for the Bay Street hordes, Seema Pabari, a former paint buyer for Lowe’s, launched a lunch delivery service called Tiffinday. Entrées are about $11 each, and everything is vegan. The menu includes curried chana and puffy bhatura bread, a lentil-stuffed dosa served with coconut chutney, and vegetable-studded basmati rice with a side of pickled lemons. Users order online by 3 p.m. the day before, and meals are prepped by 11 a.m. the next morning. Pabari sends out 150 meals a week and is aiming for 100 a day, at which point she’ll open a satellite kitchen at Yonge and Eg. “I’m going head-to-head with the food courts,” Pabari says, determined to bestow executives of both genders the culinary benefits of having an old-fashioned Indian wife.