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Thusenth Dhavaloganathan has worked as a dishwasher, busboy, server and less-than-enthusiastic line cook, a series of jobs at Creekside in Guelph, Ont., that can be chalked up to his emotional proximity to the owner and chef, a.k.a. his father, Tavon.
An accountant by training, Tavon came to Canada as a Sri Lankan refugee. He bounced around kitchens in Montreal and Toronto before opening a dine-in, family-style place of his own in Guelph, featuring chicken souvlaki, pan-fried calamari, New York strip loin steaks and garlic cheese bread on the menu.
His son has never truly been free of his Creekside duties, even as he aged out of his busboy years and headed off to Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont., to get a business degree and later launch a career in tech as a software product manager at BlackBerry Ltd.
If Dhavaloganathan’s phone wasn’t buzzing because of work, it was buzzing because his father was calling him with a question about one issue or another: a malfunctioning electronic cash register, menu redesign, marketing campaign, or whatever else might be causing the former accountant undo angst.