Barrhaven · Ottawa
Fresh vegetable, chicken and beef samosas made daily in the NASA Foods kitchen at 3050 Woodroffe Avenue. Shatter-crisp pastry, spices ground for flavour rather than heat, and a price that still makes sense when you are feeding a crowd. Open six days a week - Tuesday to Sunday, 12:00PM to 8:30PM, closed Mondays.
Almost everyone in Ottawa has eaten a samosa. Far fewer have eaten a great one, because the things that separate a great samosa from an ordinary one all happen in the last few hours before you bite into it. Pastry, spice and timing - get those three right and the result is one of the most satisfying snacks in the world. Get any of them wrong and you have a heavy triangle of dough.
A properly made samosa shell breaks. It does not bend, sag or fold under your thumb; it cracks with an audible give and leaves flakes on the plate. That texture comes from a stiff, low-moisture dough enriched with fat, rested so the gluten relaxes, rolled thin and fried at a temperature controlled closely enough that the shell dries and blisters instead of soaking. Rushed dough, wet dough or cool oil all produce the same disappointing result: a soft, greasy casing that tastes of frying rather than of anything inside it.
The measure of a filling is not how hot it is. Cumin and coriander need to be toasted and bloomed in fat to release their oils. Ginger, chilli and garam masala need to arrive in sequence so that no single note flattens the rest. Amchur or a squeeze of lemon lifts everything at the end, and salt has to be judged against the fact that the shell itself is barely seasoned. Done well, you can taste the individual spices as separate things and still experience them as one. Done badly, the whole filling tastes like a single beige note of curry powder.
This is where most samosas in a city are quietly lost. Freezing a fried samosa drives ice crystals through the pastry structure, and when it is reheated the shell rehydrates unevenly and turns leathery. Filling loses aromatic top notes to the freezer within days. Making the pastry, cooking the filling and folding and frying in the same building on the same day solves a problem that no amount of reheating skill can fix afterwards. That is the standard NASA Foods works to, and it is the reason the samosa counter has become the thing people come back for.
These are not the cheapest samosas you can buy in Ottawa, and they are not trying to be. Hand-folding takes labour, whole spices cost more than blends, and frying to order costs time. What they are is genuinely affordable - a snack you can buy for yourself on a Tuesday, and a party platter that still works out cheaper per head than almost any catered alternative in the city. That is the trade being made: quality first, at a price that keeps it an everyday thing rather than a treat.
Three fillings, one pastry, all hand prepared in Barrhaven. Mixed boxes are the usual choice when you are ordering for other people.
Vegetable Samosa price: $1.25each
The classic, and the one to order first. Coarsely crushed potato with green peas, cumin, coriander seed, ginger and a lift of sour amchur, so it tastes bright rather than starchy. Warm rather than fiery, which makes it the safe choice for mixed groups, children and anyone unsure how much heat they want. It is also the vegetarian option on the counter, and it is what most party platters lean on.
Order Vegetable
Chicken Samosa price: $2.50each
Lighter and more aromatic than you might expect. Shredded chicken cooked down with onion, ginger, garlic and warm spice until the mixture is moist but never wet, so the pastry stays crisp all the way through. It suits people who want something substantial without the richness of red meat, and it is the variety that tends to convert anyone who thinks samosas are just a potato snack.
Order Chicken
Beef Samosa price: $2.50each
The richest of the three and the most savoury. Finely minced beef browned properly before the spices go in, so the filling has depth and a slow, rounded heat rather than a sharp one. Two of these with chutney and a cup of tea is a genuine meal. It is the variety regulars buy for themselves, and the one to choose if you like your snack to eat like dinner.
Order Beef
A samosa made in a local kitchen this morning and a samosa made in a factory months ago are, structurally, two different foods that happen to share a shape. The differences are worth understanding, because they explain why people drive across Ottawa for the fresh version.
None of this requires anyone to be at fault. Frozen production solves a real problem - shelf life across a long supply chain - and it solves it well. It simply cannot deliver the specific pleasure of pastry that was rolled a few hours ago. If a shop can fry to order in the same building where the dough was made, it should, and that is the entire argument for buying your samosas from a local kitchen.
Eaten within twenty minutes of frying, a samosa needs nothing from you. If you are reheating a box the next day, a few minutes of care restores most of what was there.
Heat to 190 °C / 375 °F. Put the samosas straight on a wire rack, or on a baking tray with space between them, and give them 10 to 12 minutes from room temperature - 15 to 18 from cold fridge. Air needs to circulate underneath; stacked samosas steam each other and go soft.
The best method, and the fastest. 180 °C / 360 °F for 5 to 7 minutes, in a single layer with gaps, shaken or turned once halfway. No extra oil is needed. The moving hot air drives surface moisture off fast, which is exactly what a tired pastry shell wants.
Microwaves heat water. The water inside the filling turns to steam, that steam has nowhere to go but out through the pastry, and the shell absorbs it. Ninety seconds later you have a hot samosa with a limp, slightly rubbery casing and no crunch at all. If a microwave is genuinely your only option, use it for 30 seconds to warm the centre and then finish in a hot dry frying pan for a minute a side.
The traditional pairing is two chutneys: a sweet-sour tamarind and a sharp green coriander-mint. Serve both and let people mix. Plain yoghurt loosened with a little salt and cumin is an easy third option that cools the beef variety nicely. For something more substantial, split the samosas open and spoon over chickpeas, yoghurt, chutney and chopped onion for samosa chaat - a proper meal built from leftovers, and there is a full method for it further down this page. Masala chai alongside is not a cliché for nothing.
As a passed snack at a party with other food around, plan three to four per person. As the main savoury item at an afternoon gathering, four to five. If samosas are one part of a full meal with rice and curry, two to three each is generous. For an office lunch, ordering a mixed box of all three varieties saves you asking twenty people about their dietary preferences.
Samosa chaat is what happens when a samosa stops being a snack and becomes dinner. The samosas are crushed open rather than served whole, and the broken pastry becomes the base for a pile of warm spiced chickpeas, cold whisked yogurt, sweet-sour tamarind chutney and sharp green coriander chutney, finished with raw onion, chaat masala and a fistful of crunchy sev. It is street food from north India - Delhi and the Punjab in particular - where chaat stalls have built an entire genre out of the collision of hot and cold, crisp and soft, sweet, sour and salty in the same mouthful. The practical appeal is just as strong: eight samosas and a tin of chickpeas feed four to six people a proper sharing dish, for less than the cost of takeaway for two.
Chaat is a structural problem before it is a flavour problem. You are deliberately pouring wet, hot and cold things over pastry and then asking that pastry to hold its shape long enough to be eaten. A properly made samosa - rolled and fried the same day, with a thin shell that shatters rather than bends - breaks into shards that stay distinct under the toppings and keep giving you crunch to the last spoonful. A soft, long-frozen shell collapses into paste within a minute of the yogurt hitting it, and you end up with a bowl of pleasant mush. This is the one dish where the quality of the base is not a matter of taste; it is the difference between the dish working and not working.
Vegetable samosas are the classic base - the spiced potato takes the chutneys well. Chicken or beef samosas make a much heartier plate and need a little more yogurt to balance them. Tamarind chutney, chaat masala and sev are all stocked in the grocery aisles at NASA Foods if you are picking up the samosas anyway.
Step 1: Crisp the samosas
Reheat the samosas in an air fryer at 180 °C for 5 to 7 minutes, or in an oven at 190 °C for 10 to 12 minutes, in a single layer with space around them. This is not optional. A samosa going under wet toppings needs to start bone-dry and crisp, because everything you add next is working against it.
Step 2: Warm the chickpeas
Tip the chickpeas into a pan with 100 ml of water, half the cumin and a pinch of salt, and simmer for 6 to 8 minutes, crushing a few against the side of the pan. The crushed ones thicken the liquid so the mixture clings to the pastry instead of running off the plate.
Step 3: Whisk the yogurt
Beat the yogurt with the sugar, a pinch of salt and 2 tbsp of cold water until it pours in a smooth ribbon. Yogurt straight from the tub sits in lumps; loosened and lightly sweetened, it spreads evenly and balances the tamarind's sourness.
Step 4: Break, do not slice
Put two samosas per plate and crush each one open with the back of a spoon so the pastry cracks into rough shards and the filling spills out. Torn edges catch chutney and hold texture; a clean knife cut gives you a neat parcel that sheds its toppings.
Step 5: Layer while everything is hot
Spoon the hot chickpeas over the broken samosas first, then the yogurt, then the tamarind chutney, then the green chutney. Order matters: the chickpeas insulate the pastry, and the chutneys go last so they stay bright rather than being diluted into the yogurt.
Step 6: Season and garnish
Scatter the onion and tomato over the top, dust with the chaat masala, remaining cumin and chilli powder, then finish with sev and coriander leaves. Add a squeeze of lime at the table.
Step 7: Serve within three minutes
Samosa chaat has a short, glorious window. Assemble it at the table and eat it straight away, while the base is still crisp, the chickpeas are hot and the yogurt is cold. Plated ten minutes early it is still tasty, but it is no longer chaat.
For twenty people, count roughly thirty-five samosas, three tins of chickpeas, a kilo of yogurt and a full jar each of tamarind and green chutney. Do not plate thirty portions in advance - they will be soft before the last one is built. The far better approach for a crowd is an assemble-your-own spread: a tray of hot, freshly crisped samosas in the middle, then bowls of chickpeas, yogurt, both chutneys, onion, tomato, sev and coriander around it, with a spoon in each. Guests crush their own and build the plate they want, and every single one is eaten within a minute of assembly.
You can do almost everything in advance. The chickpeas can be cooked a day ahead and reheated, the yogurt whisked and chilled that morning, the onion, tomato and coriander chopped and covered a couple of hours before, and the chutneys are ready from the jar. Three things must be last minute: crisping the samosas, crushing them, and the sev. Everything else is preparation; those three are the dish.
Chicken samosas make a lighter, more aromatic chaat - the shredded filling stays in strands rather than merging with the chickpeas, so the plate keeps more definition. Skip the sugar in the yogurt and add extra lime. Beef samosas make the richest version of the dish, closer to a full meal; there, lean hard on the green chutney and the raw onion, cut the chickpeas back to half quantity so the beef is not competing for space, and serve fewer per person than you think you need.
Everything here rests on the base, so it is worth starting with samosas that were fried today. The vegetable samosas from NASA Foods in Barrhaven are the ones this method was written around - eight of them will feed 4-6 people a full plate of chaat.
Get Vegetable SamosasFresh samosas, made every morning in Barrhaven
Order online for pickup at 3050 Woodroffe Avenue, or call 613-823-8225 and tell them what time you are coming.
Shop NASA FoodsNASA Foods at 3050 Woodroffe Avenue in Barrhaven makes samosas in-house and sells them from the counter alongside a full Indian grocery. It is a short drive from Nepean, Manotick, Riverside South and central Ottawa, with parking at the door. You can walk in and buy what is on the counter, or order ahead through the online shop so a larger batch is boxed and waiting when you arrive.
Yes. The pastry is rolled, the fillings are cooked and the samosas are folded and fried on site through the day rather than being thawed from a factory carton. That is why the shell still shatters when you bite it and the filling still tastes of individual spices. Batches come out at intervals, so if you want them still warm it is worth calling ahead to ask when the next tray is due.
Three: vegetable, chicken and beef. Vegetable is the spiced potato and pea classic and the one most people start with. Chicken is lighter and more aromatic, built around shredded chicken with onion and warm spice. Beef is the richest of the three, deeply savoury and satisfying. Mixed orders are easy to arrange, which is the usual choice for parties and office lunches.
The vegetable samosa is made with a potato and pea filling and no meat, which makes it the standard choice for vegetarian guests. Because the kitchen also prepares chicken and beef varieties in the same space, anyone with a strict dietary or religious requirement should confirm preparation details directly with the counter staff at 613-823-8225 before ordering for an event.
Order online through the NASA Foods shop, or phone 613-823-8225 and tell them the headcount, the date and the mix of varieties you want. For a drinks-and-snacks gathering, plan on three to four samosas per person; if samosas are carrying the meal alongside rice and curry, two to three each is plenty. Large orders are boxed in trays so they travel flat and stay intact.
For a dozen or two, same-day usually works - call in the morning and collect in the afternoon. For fifty or more, give the kitchen at least twenty-four to forty-eight hours so the batch can be folded and fried close to your pickup rather than early. Weekends, Diwali, Eid and the December party season are the busiest windows, so add a few extra days then.
Yes, and it is worth doing. When you place a phone or online order, name the time you want to collect and the kitchen will aim to have that batch coming out of the fryer close to it. A samosa collected fifteen minutes after frying is a noticeably better thing than one that has been sitting for two hours, so a scheduled pickup is the single easiest quality upgrade available to you.
This site is about the samosas made by NASA Foods, an Indian restaurant and grocery at 3050 Woodroffe Avenue, Barrhaven, Ottawa. It sits on the Woodroffe corridor in south-west Ottawa, easy to reach from Strandherd, Fallowfield and Greenbank, with parking on site. The shop is open six days a week, Tuesday to Sunday from 12:00PM to 8:30PM, and closed on Mondays. Call 613-823-8225 to confirm around public holidays.
Samosa chaat is the answer almost everyone lands on: crush the samosas open, spoon over warm chickpeas, whisked yogurt, tamarind and green chutney, then finish with onion, chaat masala and sev. It turns six or eight samosas into a full sharing dish. They also work split and stuffed into a bun as a pav, or chopped through a salad of onion, tomato and lime.
Count two samosas per person as a main dish and one and a half as a starter, so eight samosas serve four to six people comfortably. Vegetable samosas are the standard base because the potato filling absorbs the chutneys well. If you are setting up an assemble-your-own spread, add a couple of spares - people build bigger plates than they mean to.
Still deciding? Browse the NASA Foods shop or call 613-823-8225.
Every samosa on this page is made and sold by NASA Foods, an Indian restaurant and grocery in Barrhaven. This is their address, their kitchen and their phone line.
NASA Foods
3050 Woodroffe Avenue
Barrhaven, Ottawa, Ontario
Tuesday to Sunday, 12:00PM – 8:30PM. Closed Mondays. Samosas come out of the kitchen through the day, so call ahead if you want a tray still warm.