After a string of different jobs – including stonemason, caregiver and store manager – Itamar Shani discovered his calling in a rather unlikely place: the back of a food truck. “It was there I realized that I was a chef,” he says. “All my life, I'd been writing in a recipe book. I'd been making everything by myself – my own flour, I'd roast my own coffee. I realized that I really connected with food from the ground up.”
At the same time, Rotem Tal came from a family steeped in hummus tradition; not only does his uncle own multiple hummus places in his native Israel, but Rotem himself had begun finding success making and selling his own on campus at the University of British Columbia. “He started making hummus, and people got crazy about it,” Itamar explains. “And we'd become good friends. And I said 'Hey, I'm thinking of opening a food truck. Did you want to do it with me?'”
Less than three months later, in the spring of 2016, Chickpea was born, bringing vegan and vegetarian Mediterranean-inspired comfort food to the streets of Vancouver. The pair set a brisk pace, taking the food truck to everything from weddings to events and festivals, and a little over a year later, Chickpea's first brick-and-mortar restaurant opened its doors in Vancouver's Riley Park neighbourhood, steps away from the Mount Pleasant area.
“It was like an explosion,” Itamar laughs. “We had a small commissary, then had to move to a bigger one, then had to buy our own commissary after three or four months. And then we decided we needed our own space to spread the 'chickpeace' a bit more.”
