TEMPLE CAFE AIMS FOR BALANCE
Welcoming Gujarati restaurant is sweet and savory, modest and lively
Red-and-white flags flapped over the spun-sugar towers and domes of the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan temple in Stafford on a recent weekend afternoon. Low fountains played among the topiary and severely clipped hedges of this world unto itself. A constant procession of worshippers ebbed and flowed, clad in bright saris and salwar kameez, Western streetwear or devotional white kurtas. Off to the side, a platinum blonde in a teeny-tiny dress vamped for a photographer, an assistant lugging a cartful of equipment behind. “Must not have read the dress code,” I snorted to myself from my catbird counter seat at Shayona Cafe, the welcoming little Gujarati restaurant that serves templegoers every day of the week.
Modest dress is prescribed for visitors to the Hindu mandir, or temple (covered shoulders, please; no shorts or skirts above the knee); and though the temple grounds function as selfie heaven, professional photography is forbidden. Presently the assistant handed a parka to Miss Sugar Land (or so I had dubbed her in my mind), who had been on the receiving end of nothing more than a
few discreet side-eyes, and the odd little moment passed.
I watched this pageant nursing a gently sweet, cardamom-scented milk tea and a disposable white plastic thali tray — yes, that’s an Indian fast-food thing — kaleidoscoped with offerings from Shayona’s $9.99 daily buffet. I’ve had it twice now, and I’m a fan of the varied, intricate templestyle vegetarian food, with its curries and dals, snacks and sweetmeats, rice and pickle and pliable wheat rotis for scooping things up with your hands, if you want to do it up right.
Shayona’s is modest, complexly seasoned fare that manages to taste lively despite temple-food strictures against onions or garlic. And though overly chile-hot dishes are not held to be conducive to the spiritual balance for which temple food aims, some dishes pack surprising heat.
There’s always a spicy, soupy sambar variant; and a slightly sweetened version of raita — edged with a thrilling medicinal twinge of mysterious origin — for dipping flatbread or any of the varied crispy snacks that come as a side. I loved two different versions of paneer, the pressed Indian farmersstyle cheese, in fragrant tomato gravies laced with tri-color peppers. One was a little sweet, the other tarter and more savory.
I had never tried the Gujarati winter dish called undihiyu before, but I found the green tumble of unexpected vegetables — including pigeon peas, unripe banana, green beans, eggplant and potato — hauntingly sweet-tinged and spiced.
A touch of sweetness is typical of food from Gujarat state, according to Anita Jaisinghani, the chef-owner of Pondicheri who urged me and my editor, Jody Schmal, to try Shayona Cafe and graze through the multitudinous snacks and sweets available for sale in the adjoining grocery and gift shop. Back in my more benighted days, I remember telling someone that one reason I loved Indian food was because it wasn’t sweet.
Well, in some regions — such as the central western province where Swaminarayan, the spiritual founder of this temple’s branch of Hinduism, came to rest after a long pilgrimage — sweet and savory twine together in ways that I now find myself getting accustomed to, and even appreciating.
That slightly sweetened raita was electric. A friendly gentleman staffer with a red bindi midforehead told us we weren’t really tasting the asafoetida Anita and I had guessed at, but rather some secret masala mix he could not reveal. I ended up eating it with half the items on my thali.
I even spooned some on the spongy little dhokla triangles that are a premier Gujarati snack food. Dhokla is made from fermented rice and chickpea flour batter that’s steamed into fluffy cakes and garnished with fried mustard seeds, cilantro and green chile. Shayona serves it in a pretty sandwich form, with layers of white and turmeric-tinted sponge bound together with an herbal emerald chutney.
The dhokla might show up as a buffet item; or you can buy a whole, fresh boxful in the adjacent store and bring it home to eat for breakfast, lunch or midnight snacks. ( Just eat it fast because the sponge is so moist the dhokla doesn’t keep well.) Jaisinghani insisted we try khaman, a loftier, spongier dhokla cousin made solely of fermented chickepea flour, so we sampled it from a box we bought next door, over milk tea and wildly gingery lemonade, remarking on the slightly sweet syrup that sank to the bottom, creating an agrodolce effect.
You’re welcome to bring in such boxed snacks and picnic on them in the bright, modern cafe, which is fitted out with white chairs in molded plastic and a mix of high and regulation-height tables, plus the exceptionally appealing window counter that, to my mind, offers one of the best restaurant views in the Greater Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Under Jaisinghani’s guidance, we sampled our way through patra, whorls of colocassia leaf (aka elephant ears) rolled up with a gingery, mustard-shot paste sweetened with jaggery (cane sugar) and tamarind; and khandvi, satiny sheets of chickpea-flour and yogurt batter that roll up into delicate cylinders garnished with green chile, sesame and mustard seeds.
We giggled like schoolkids (of which there were plenty in attendance) over papadi no lot, an uncooked rice-flour dough that tasted, with its mix of cumin and pungent ajwain seeds, like otherworldly mashed potatoes and provided the illicit frisson of unbaked cookie dough. I fixated on dudhi halwo, a pale-green square of fudgelike candy made from bottle gourd, ricotta, cashew and cardamom, which I found curiously delicious.
We oohed and aahed over a few of Shayona’s fried snack foods, too especially the crisp, bubble-surfaced spheres called subadana vada, fritters of potato, peanut and tapioca pearls that provide a frisky texture. Want a bit of chutney to go along? It’s available in little cellophane packets along with the wrapped plastic utensils at the end of the buffet line, another manifestation of Indian fast food.
Speaking of which: There’s cheese pizza for sale, and grilled cheese sandwiches for the kids, along with a couple of aguas frescas and a hummus wrap that appears on the weekend list of specialties after the 4 p.m. buffet close. A soda-shop vibe prevails when teens swarm in among the family crowd. And there’s always help or a welcoming word for newbies. Casual visitors are treated very nicely, which speaks volumes.
At meal’s end, make a pass through the riches of the food and gift shop, its extraordinary wall of snacks and crisps forming a tapestry of golds, oranges, ivories, saffrons and mustards. Pick up a refrigerated tray of rasmalai, the downy Bengali ricotta sweets, or a packet of Gujarati-style khakra, the roti-size wheat crackers flavored with various spices or seeds.
Then stash your goods in your car, which you will have parked in the cafe’s lot, disregarding the perplexing “15 minutes only” signs, which are not enforced.
Approach the mandir, observing the discreet-rules signs posted, and pass the reflecting pools and fountains. To enter the temple, stash your shoes in a room to the right (for women) or the left (for men) of the entrance. Ascend the broad staircase and take your time soaking in the extraordinary sculpted-marble detail of the temple.
I’m not a religious person, but I am not immune to the power of sacred spaces. The mandir is one of them, calming the mind and inspiring the faithful toward a virtuous life. I love that in Hinduism food plays a significant part in spiritual life — whether balancing mind and body at Shayona or presented as a sacred offering on festival dates, after which it is shared among worshippers.
“When I go to a church and there’s no food, I wonder why not?” Jaisinghani said with a wry smile. At Houston’s Shri Swaminaray mandir, I began to see what she means.