Drop in for Indian home-style lunch at Amaranth
There’s usually a difference between the kind of food we cook at home and the kind we eat in restaurants — everyday vs. fancier. Monthly opportunities to have home-style vegetarian Indian meals are coming up at Amaranth Bakery & Cafe, 3329 W. Lisbon Ave.
The next lunch in the series will be from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday. Other lunches, each with a different menu, will be Nov. 16, Jan. 11 and Feb. 8.
Preparing the lunches are Lajwanti Waghray, a filmmaker who has a film (“On Hands”) in the upcoming Milwaukee Film Festival, and her friend Sonal Shah, a mathematics teacher with an interest in cooking.
Waghray said she started cooking at Amaranth a few years ago on a night when customers would gather for plant exchanges and other activities. “It became really interesting,” she said, as she introduced her east side and North Shore friends to Amaranth’s neighborhood and the cafe’s customers to Indian cooking.
Waghray said she and Shah prepare simple dishes like they’d serve at home. You could say the food typically served in Indian restaurants is more like party food, she said.
Waghray is from Hyderabad, where the food of south India is influenced by Moghal cuisine; Shah is from the western Indian state of Gujarat, renowned for its snacks and vegetarian fare.
Diners can drop in any time during lunch hours at Amaranth and order a plate; when they’re finished, customers simply pay what they want. There’s no set price. Proceeds are donated to various charities; for example, a previous cause was hurricane relief in the Bahamas.
Here’s the menu for Saturday: Pancake-like uttapam, potato curry, coconut chutney, cucumber and moong dal stir fry, and fruit salad in custard.