841 Ouellette Aveune

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• This is one of the few examples of Victorian Architecture in the city. Two interesting features that I have always noticed about this house were the brickwork on the Chimney and the slate roof. I am shock how few Victorian homes and building have survived in Windsor. I see street after street of Victorian homes in Cities like Chatham, London and Stratford. There seems to be a larger selection of Victorian homes in Kingvillle and Leamington.

• What are the operating hours?

• Art Gallery of Windsor information: http://www.artgalleryofwindsor.com/
  The street car exhibit runs till Jan 3, 2010.

• Hello folks, my neice sent me this info so I am responding to it. I dad is the owner of this building since the late 1960's. This building was a rooming house when we purchased it. In 1972 my parents opened up the Himalaya Restaurant which was a family business. All the kids worked there after school, even me. I waited tables, served drinks, cooked, cleaned, and did maintence work on the building while going thru grade school, high school and later university.

  When A & P closed down and relocated to the old Patterson School building (Food Basic store now on Goyeau and Elliott Street), Mother's Pizza was opening up and they did sand blasting on the exterior. We wanted to do the same, but due to the age of the building, the mortar would be further loosened, thus damaging the bricks. So my younger brother and I painted the entire building by brush and roller in a watermellon pink adhesive paint that would seal the bricks and the mortar. We did all the trim work around the windows in white paint. Years later when this pink latex paint was cracking and further damage to the bricks would result, we had the stucco done to preserve the bricks and the mortar.

  In early 1984, after graduating, I opened up a Chiropractic Office downstairs, in the basement of the Himalaya Restaurant. The entrance was from the front, and to avoid snow and ice build up on the stairs leading downstairs, we enlcosed the stair case with a porch. I still maintain an office here on a part time basis.

  As for the restaurant, my dad served up excellent meals for over 36 years! We had customers from all over Canada, USA and the world! We use to do catering parties for many clients including rock stars, saints and gurus, and foreign digitaries which would come from a Common Wealth Organization. I remember waiting on Idi Amin, and other dignitaries where we would have to close the restaurant down to the general public, and have police guards outside, for their safety.

  Due to my mother's death in 1998, and my dad's advanced glaucoma and his blindness, he still operated the restaurant on a limited basis when we kids could help out. On December 31st, 2008, the restaurant was permanently closed. The entire building, with apartments for rent upstairs, a fully furnished and equipped restaurant with a full liquor license, and a doctor's office downstairs is for sale or lease. For more information contact my dad at (519) 969-4698.

  I hope this sheds a little light on the past.

  Sincerely,

  Dr. Mahavir Oza

• I have never eaten at a better place in my life, and I've eaten out at a lot of places. I'm fortunate to have eaten here, and I don't know if anything can quite replace the experience. Fond, fond, memories. I can rave on and on about the Himalaya Dining Room experience with Chef OZA to walk into the Himalaya Dining Room is to be transported to India.

• Dr. Oza, thanks for the update and info. However I wouldn't say Idi Amin was a "dignitary". ;)

• My wife and I were eating dinner with our daughter when I remarked that best dining experience I ever had were the times with Chef Oza and his family. I first came there for dinner in 1973 at the suggestion of Tom Lebow and John VanZandt who worked with me at Lobby Hobby Camera in Detroit when I was seventeen years old. Chef Oza cooked dinner for me and my friends on my thirtieth birthday seventeen years later (there were twenty of us). When I met my wife in later years Chef Oza offered to come to our house in West Bloomfield and cook for us for a engagement party. I asked him how many I could invite and he told me needed only four burners to cook for 200 people. My friend Phil Dahke, a chemist at my place of work, told me that the Chef cooked for many well-to-do Indian families in Detroit and all I would need to do is pick him up in Windsor and take him shopping and he would do the rest. I was too shy at the time to ask him to do it. What an opportunity I missed!

  Over the years I learn to appreciate who was the finest Chef of Indian Cuisine I ever experienced in America. The only place I had food even remotely comparable was London (UK). BTW...the brains of the family were Mrs. Oza. I've never experienced a sharper or more brilliant wit in my life. She could put you in your place with two or three words. I know why he loved her so much. I am taking my daughter to dance, and when I get a chance I will come back and write about Keeshor and Priya. I met the oldest son and his wife only once or twice. I hope they will read this and pass the message along to Mr. Oza.

  I am in the 'book' in West Bloomfield. The last I heard Keeshor lived in Waterford?

  I hope I remember to write about the cooking class we took with him. I miss Mr. Oza and wish him the best of health and happiness. He made me very happy too.

• Correction....that was Prima....not Priya.

• My wife, Helen (a great Malaysian-Indian chef herself), and I would strongly endorse every positive comment made here about chef Oza - - a great man! And I could go on to add a lot more about his warmth and kindness and friendliness. A toss-up, really, as to whether it was the food or chef Oza that contributed the most to the place, in addition of course to the unique charms of Mrs. Oza, "cheeky Prima", and (early in my experience there) a lovely & charming daughter-in-law!

  I'm very very sorry that relocation from the Detroit area made it impossible for us to maintain our "attendance" at the Himalaya during the later years of its life. Helen and I wish Mr. Oza the very best and would love to have him reminded of the many extremely fond memories we have of our evenings at the Himalaya.

  Tim & Helen Coon

• when i was in high school i went to king george on ottawa stree for 2 years and chef oza was the culinary teacher i just learned that he is blind he seemed like such a nice person soft spoken