A Former Professional Soccer Player Is Hosting the Coolest Pop-Up Dinners in Canada

How a pro soccer player turned self-taught chef creates a unique taste of place and identity in Canada’s northernmost wine region.

Aman Dosanj is bent over a large mixing bowl at Terravista Vineyards in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley making jhal muri, a popular Indian street food snack, along with her “Granny’s peas.” Both are made with local ingredients: puffed B.C. rice, Fieldstone Organics peas, and diced springtime vegetables. The peas are fried and spiced with Dosanj’s own blend of chaat masala and chile before being served in cones made from freshly plucked grape leaves. This is regional Indian cooking that offers a dual taste of place, from Kerala to Kelowna, the region’s largest city.

Winding through the valley, you’ll find countless wineries, farms, and fruit stands lining Highway 97, selling strawberries, cherries, peaches, plums, pears, and apples as the seasons turn. Many of them also sell homemade samosas, pakoras, and fresh fruit chutneys, owing to the many South Asian families who own orchards in the region. Yet that’s not Dosanj’s story.

Born in Southampton, England, she was a young goalkeeper playing for the Southampton Saints Football Club when she became the first British South Asian player to represent England at any level. If this sounds similar to the storyline of the movie Bend It Like Beckham, that’s because it is: Both Dosanj and the main character, Jess, are soccer-obsessed Sikhs growing up in England who miss important family functions for games and end up with scholarships to play in the U.S. (In March, her hometown even erected a statue of Dosanj in her honor.) In 2008, after an injury and personal reasons forced her to step back from soccer, Dosanj moved to Canada with her family, going on to become, in turns, a marketing executive, Slow Food advocate, restaurant owner, and talented self-taught chef. For the past seven years, she has hosted pop-up dinners at farms and vineyards throughout the valley.

At her Sourced dinners, Dosanj knows where every ingredient was grown, how it was grown, and, more often than not, the name of the person who grew it. “Let me tell you a story about what’s possible,” she tells me. “Covert Farms uses red lentils as one of their cover crops to build the biodiversity of the soil. When they harvested the lentils, they asked me to create a recipe. So the lentils that helped grow the grapes that went into the wine became a perfect pairing.” Dosanj used the lentils in a dal she served at a previous summer pop-up.

“The stories and dinners are linked,” explains Dosanj. “Even though we’re popping up one time at a particular farm, we’ll still tell stories about each farm or winery for the entire season. That way, we continue to grow our little ecosystem.” One week’s dinner may be about the complexities and techniques of Indian food, while the next could focus on the bounty of slow food with a meditation on patience.

From a makeshift kitchen set up on the lawn across from Terravista’s tasting room, Dosanj finishes dishing out her snacks while her mom, Jas, also a chef, rolls out dough for a few dozen rumali roti. Dosanj stretches the dough by hand and places the delicate rounds on an inverted cast-iron wok set over a portable firepit for all to see.

A rough-hewn 32-seat wooden harvest table nearby is dotted with small vases of purple wildflowers, and the view overlooking the vineyard’s lush and leafy vines and Okanagan Lake is a little hazy owing to forest fires and an impending storm. As the dinner unfolds, you can tell Dosanj has gone to great lengths to connect the Okanagan food world to her own personal story.

By the end of the meal, the table is full of chatty, happy people as wineglasses are drained and the last spoonful of Keralan tender coconut pudding is finished. While the food and wine have been superb—juicy chicken seekh kebab paired with the winery’s 2021 Syrah, super-seasonal B.C. spot prawns bathed in a lusciously aromatic Malabar sauce—what I admire most about Dosanj is her strength in sharing her convictions. “The Okanagan is predominantly white,” she tells the table full of white people. “This is my interpretation of the Okanagan,” she continues. “People like me don’t just deserve a seat at the table. We deserve to shine.” Everyone applauds.

Like many chefs of color, Dosanj wasn’t invited to the table, so she created one of her own. And now, she lugs it up and down the valley each spring and summer, from farmers’ fields to winery cellar floors, in the hopes that other people like her–women, immigrants, outsiders—will also join her in sharing their food and telling their own stories as well.

Shop the valley

Green Croft Gardens

The farm supplies Dosanj with most of her organic produce. Visit their seasonal farmstand in Grindrod on Thursdays from noon to 6 p.m.

Secrest Organics at Covert Farms Family Estate

Covert Farms in Oliver offers tractor tours, U-pick, and guided wine tastings. Terry Grewal and his wife, Harpreet, farm some of their land, making Secrest one of the only Indian-operated organic produce stands in the valley.

Codfathers Seafood Market

Owner and fishmonger Jon Crofts is a Slow Fish advocate. Sustainable seafood is on the menu in the city of Kelowna, from ready-to-eat “seacuterie” to fresh day-boat B.C. halibut.

D Dutchmen Dairy

All of Dosanj’s dairy comes from here. Hankering for a scoop of ice cream? They make 62 different flavors on-site, fresh from that day’s milk production.

Wise Earth Farm

This small, family-run farm in Kelowna grows Dosanj’s favorite pea shoots and crunchy sprouted beans; you can taste their produce at top local restaurants like Mission Hill and RauDZ.

FleuRich Creations

This Black-owned florist in Kelowna uses only seasonal flowers, from bunches of peonies to bouquets made with wild blooms and greenery. They also sell lovely homewares and trinkets.

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