A new vegetarian Indian restaurant, Gokul Snacks and Sweets, is headed to the East Loop. Owner Jim Sandhe will be opening location No. 2 at 6101 Delmar Blvd., in the spot vacated by Vietnamese eatery, Miss Saigon.
“I have a lot of students coming from Washington University and they have been telling me to open something in The Loop,” said Sandhe, who launched the original location at 10633 Page Ave., in Maryland Heights in 2002. “There is no Indian restaurant in The Loop, and we are 100 percent vegetarian. Hopefully it will work.”
The menu at both locations will be the same. If you haven’t eaten at Gokul before, Sandhe recommends appetizers such as the vegetable pakora (deep fried mixed veggies served with tamarind and mint chutney) and samosas. Among the entrées, a customer fave is paneer tikka masala. The classic dish is prepared at Gokul with housemade cheese cooked with bell peppers, tomatoes and onions in a creamy garlic-tomato sauce served with rice. Sandhe also suggests surati undhiyu, a mixed vegetable dish that hails from the Indian state Gujarat. “It’s made out of sweet potatoes, eggplant, yam – seven different kinds of vegetables [in all], and you eat it with puri and rice.”
If you can’t decide on one thing, try it all. The buffet, which includes some 32 items, is just $9.99. And vegans, mark your calendar for the second and fourth Monday of the month, when Gokul will offer a vegan buffet at The Loop location. It will feature the same menu items as the regular buffet but without butter, milk or other animal by-products. The restaurant on Page offers a vegan buffet on the first and third Monday of each month.
Sandhe hopes for an Oct. 2 opening but warns that it could be as late as Oct. 15 before the doors are unlocked.
This article appears in Sep 1-30, 2010.