Rama’s celebrating Fijian Indian food and family for 35 years (and we say Happy Birthday!)
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In a city that sees new eateries throw open their doors on a weekly basis, it’s profoundly comforting to celebrate the 35th birthday of Rama’s Fijian Indian today.
Nestled in a corner of the Pearce shops, this is a restaurant which has not won any of the big awards nor been awarded any hats, and yet when you ask the city’s eating public where they love to go and what they recommend, Rama’s comes up again and again.
The two sisters behind the restaurant are Mini Gaundar, who runs front of house, and Manni Gounder and her husband, Parsu Ram, cook a classic Fijian Indian menu that, while expanding over the decades, still recreates the original classics night after night.
Like their Fijian Pork Curry cooked with capsicum, onion and coriander, Goat Curry with fresh spices or the Prawn Saabji, cooked with onion, garlic, tomato, spinach and coconut milk. Meals come served with a perfectly rounded dome of saffron rice and delicious accompaniments such as a wholemeal pan-fried roti, banana and coconut, and a yellow split pea dahl.
Rama’s is full most nights most weeks, and the homestyle cooking and generous portions, backed by Mini’s energetic stewardship of the floor and preternatural talent for remembering names and faces, make this a pretty special place to be – one of the city’s true suburban gems.
Sisters Manni and Mini and staff.
Where others have come and gone, Rama’s care for cuisine and customers has allowed it to stay the course, symbolising multicultural Canberra in one small but always bustling restaurant and creating its own culinary lore.
“Did I think we would be celebrating Rama’s after 35 years?” asks Mini. “Absolutely not!”
And yet every afternoon from Tuesday to Saturday, she arrives at the restaurant to start a busy night.
Since she was eight years old and growing vegetables in the family’s plot in the town of Solovi in Nadi, Fiji, Mini has been industrious.
By the age of 17, her father, a sugarcane farmer, placed her on a plane to Canberra to get the best education she could get, following in the footsteps of her older brother, who was completing his Law degree at the Australian National University.
“Our dad was forward-thinking. He wanted all of his seven kids to have an education, and that included the five girls. He didn’t want us to be limited like so many other women in Fiji.”
Coming from humble beginnings (remembering the miracle of both running water and electricity connected to their bure home in the 1980s), Mini found Canberra beautiful.
She still recalls her arrival and the late-night drive down Northbourne Avenue under the lights, which sparkled a pathway into her new life in an unknown city. She had never even been on a plane before.
Despite missing her family desperately, Mini settled in, making friends, perfecting her English and completing her Science degree at the ANU before marrying her college sweetheart, Milton, who was also studying at the ANU.
Mini’s daughters with her Father, Mother and Aunty at Ramas.
Mini started work at the Commonwealth Bank and aspired to own her own news agency one day.
Then, in 1987, her older sister Manni and Parsu and their two daughters fled Fiji during the coup.
While Mini was busy working at the bank during the week and doing weekend shifts at a newsagent’s to pay the mortgage on her home with Milton while he finished his studies, her sister got a job cooking at Rama’s, which had been started up in 1984 by a Fijian Indian woman and her Australian husband.
But the family faced an immigration disaster when the restaurant went up for sale. Without jobs, Manni, Parsu and their girls could not stay in Australia.
That’s when Mini sprang into action. She stretched her finances to the absolute limit, and with the help of two dear friends she had made at university, who lent her money, she bought Rama’s to keep the family together. They opened for service on 1 June, 1991 as a family-owned and run business.
The irony was that the first night was packed due to an existing booking.
“We had never run a restaurant before, and I just remember us all running around that night trying to keep up.”
Then came the lean times, when not a single customer would book. But the family worked hard. Manni trained Parsu in the kitchen (overturning conventional Fijian cultural norms where cooking was entirely the domain of women), and the family perfected a menu that delivers the flavours of Fiji. It relied on fresh fruit and vegetables with the complex spices and techniques of southern Indian food, dating back to their Indian heritage when Mini’s grandfather migrated to Fiji from Tamil Nadu.
Pre-renovation days at Rama’s with Chef Parsu.
In 1995, the family finally received permanent visas, and the restaurant underwent a renovation, introducing the bold Mondrian colours that make it stand out today. Eventually, Mini felt confident to leave her day jobs to focus on the restaurant completely.
She still recalls hiring their first Australian staff member, a young lad called Brian, who flourished under Mini’s mentorship. And that’s where her reputation as a brilliant boss began.
“I love our staff, I love kids, I love training them and watching them grow. I love giving them a chance and seeing them succeed.”
Meanwhile, as more family members settled into Canberra and Mini had three daughters of her own, the restaurant was always the scene for family members pitching in, including Mini’s father, who worked there on a regular basis. With 24 extended family members now living in Canberra, not one has not had to do a shift or two at Rama’s!
The restaurant has earned enormous loyalty.
During Covid, the Canberra community rallied around their Pearce local, and orders would come in every night for deliveries right around Canberra.
“I actually loved lockdown because Canberra showed up for us, and we were busier than ever.”
But the thing Mini missed? Her customers. Over the years, she has served politicians and football stars (the obsessed Raiders fanatic could barely contain her excitement when Ricky Stuart arrived one night for a meal) and most of Canberra’s movers and shakers. But she is just as attentive to the young families and elderly couples who come through the door.
In review after review, it is Mini’s enthusiasm for service that is mentioned. She greets every customer, explains the menu, judges taste preferences, advises on spice levels and then commits it all to memory for the next visit.
Mini in Fiji in January with her three daughters, Georgie, Adriana and Bianca.
Because people invariably return.
“We have our popular dishes that people come back for – our samosas and the Palak Panir, or the Mango Chicken (which is actually a recipe Mini devised as a Fijian take on the Australian 1970s classic of Apricot Chicken) and, of course, the Pumpkin Roti (gently spiced pumpkin wrapped in fresh warm roti),” says Mini.
“Our biggest seller has always been the Chicken Korma. We have one family that orders five Chicken Kormas for each member, so we label them. They’ll get different spice levels, and they’ll take it to work the next day or have it for the next night’s dinner.”
That’s another thing about Rama’s. They don’t charge corkage (unheard of these days), and they enthusiastically support packing up leftovers to take home and reduce waste.
The biggest and best samosas in town with Pakoras and Bhajia, and Chicken Korma.
It’s the sort of restaurant you don’t find often, and the sort of place 91-year-old Mr Robson cherishes. He has been coming for decades and still arrives on a Tuesday, sadly without his beloved wife, who died three years ago.
“He has the same table, he orders the same thing (a mixed entrée and Kahlua ice cream), and he always pays $100,” says Mini with emotion.
The cost of the meal is actually $50.
When it was his 90th birthday, Mini took him to Courgette to celebrate. And then she took him back to celebrate his 91st.
“And we will go out for his next birthday. I love our regulars; I love that families have grown up in our restaurant; I love celebrating the milestones with them, and I love seeing them bring their babies in.”
So when you ask Mini whether she plans to retire any time soon, despite an outstanding track record of 35 years, she says with a trademark wide smile, “No. Not yet. I love my staff and my customers, and I love when people yell out on the street, ‘That’s Rama!’”
