About Us

A natural passion for cooking and a feisty entrepreneurial spirit has guided Shefali Somani and brought Indian and Thai cuisine to Calgary food lovers. As founder of Shef’s Fiery Kitchen, Shefali (Shef) always had a passion for cooking, and gets great pleasure from making people happy through food—a passion first ignited growing up helping her mother in the kitchen. As a young woman, an education was first and foremost and Shefali received a Bachelor of Arts degree at University of Lethbridge and a Multimedia diploma. She worked in these areas for a time but continued to be called back to her first love—food. In 2003 Shef was working full-time as a Pharmacy Technician but still indulging her love for cooking and cuisine. She traveled to Thailand to learn the regional cooking methods and was spending her free evenings teaching cooking classes in homes. With a government sponsored business class behind her, it was time to put her love of cooking on the market.

Shef’s Fiery Kitchen opened in 2003 as a small-scale operation, selling hot curries at small farmers’ markets in the Calgary area before opening a stall at the Calgary Farmers’ Market at Currie Barracks. Now it was time to make it a family affair— Shef called her sister, Sharon, and told her to come back home from Chicago and join her in this new venture. Sharon Somani shared her sister’s love of the Indian and Thai cuisine and had herself studied cooking in Thailand and Bali. Together, the sisters built up a thriving business selling hot and frozen Indian and Thai curries and snacks for the next four years and developed a loyal following of customers. When the Calgary Farmers’ Market moved to Blackfoot and Heritage Drive in 2011, the sisters followed. It was there where they expanded their business to include fresh Naan made in a Tandoor oven, along with Naanzzas and other Tandoor delicacies. The popularity of the dishes increased by leaps and bounds and Shef’s Butter Chicken and Naanzzas received critical acclaim in local publications like Avenue and Swerve.

Shef’s is a popular lunch destination at the Calgary Farmers’ Market, with an ever-changing menu of delicious curries, soups and salads. They started wholesaling their products to Market 17, and have been a mainstay there for over two years. It was only a matter of time before Shef’s Fiery Kitchen was approached by Calgary Co-op, a Calgary-based grocer who prides themselves on supporting local vendors. Shef’s Fiery Kitchen launched 4 of their most popular curries at all 24 Co-op stores in mid-September 2013, allowing them to make their curries available in all corners of Calgary and outlying areas. The sisters are very excited to have this new channel for promoting their products, and are making plans to make more of their tasty products available in the near future.

Shef’s Fiery Kitchen uses locally sourced natural, antibiotic and hormone free beef and chicken. All their curries are gluten free, and they carry many dairy free items, sensitive to customer’s dietary restrictions. They use fresh, high quality local ingredients when possible. The most important ingredient in Shef’s Fiery Kitchen—the love and passion for cooking that was formed in those early years in the family kitchen, a tradition that lives on with every bite.

Enjoy!