Radha’s Cuisine - A Restaurateur’s Dream

“A few chance encounters with devotees of Krsna made him think twice about his course in life—and about the type of courses he was serving in his restaurants.”

By Satyaraja Dasa

IT WOULD NOT be a stretch to say that Radharani—Lord Krsna’s eternal consort, the essence of spiritual energy, the original goddess—tangibly manifested in New York City for the first time when Srila Prabhupada opened the first Hare Krsna temple at 26 Second Avenue on the Lower East Side in 1966. Similarly, it would not be inappropriate to say that Sri Radha now lives only a few blocks away. This time she greets us in the form of a trendy East Village restaurant—in the artsy, up-and-coming area now associated with the hip youth culture of New York.

Her presence here is largely the work of one devotee, Kaliya Krsna Dasa. His story begins in 1970, when he was born to a Muslim father and a Greek Orthodox mother in Lebanon.

“We would go to the mosque on Friday,” he says with a smile, “and church on Sundays. This pluralistic way of life served me well when I came to Krsna consciousness. I could really appreciate its non-sectarianism.”

Due to his father’s work as an IBM representative for the Middle East, the family moved much, bringing young Khalil, as he was then known, to Athens, Paris, London, and elsewhere.

As a result, he became something of a polyglot, with fluency in Arabic, French, Spanish, Greek, and English. Not that he was a scholar, but he learned the languages as a matter of course. He is a jovial, down-to-earth, friendly sort, with an affable personality and a natural interest in people.

All of this was to come in handy when, living in New York City, he decided to invest in a restaurant with some high school friends and acquaintances. With little money and a lot of gumption, the young entrepreneurs chose the posh SoHo/ West Village district, where wealthy trendsetters live and visit from around the world. This was their first attempt, and that’s how the now historic Le Zoo restaurant was born—a high-end, classy enterprise that pioneered the mid-nineties restaurant scene in lower Manhattan. Success led to the opening of a second project in 1997—the hip Belgian brasserie Waterloo. Both places called for a cosmopolitan manager who could accommodate a wide variety of customers—people from various quarters of the world, speaking many tongues. Khalil was the man for the job.

Changing Course

His exciting life of clubs and restaurants was soon to get even more exciting, but in a different way. A few chance encounters with devotees of Krsna made him think twice about his course in life—and about the type of courses he was serving in his restaurants. Meat and liquor were a staple in places like these, but Khalil was developing a spiritual sensibility, and he longed to transform his establishments into more of a mode-of-goodness kind of venue, with vegetarian options and limitations on the liquor. He tolerated the harsh reactions of his business partners and customers.

Soon he met Romapada Swami, whom he accepted as his spiritual master, and the die was cast. He needed to change the essential structure of his business, or to give it up altogether. A developing friendship with Yajna Purusa Dasa, one of New York’s most active Hare Krsna preachers, instilled in Khalil, now Kaliya Krsna Dasa, a desire to morph his restaurants into prasadam establishments. He now wanted to emphasize healthy vegetarian cuisine, but, more important, he wanted to serve customers food first offered to Krsna. Since only prasadam would truly help the diners of New York, he would never again serve anything else.

“Prasadam will purify all who eat it because it’s spiritually identical to Krsna,” says Kaliya. “It’s pure spirit. New Yorkers can sure use that kind of purification—great-tasting food that takes them to the spiritual world. I wanted to make sure that’s exactly what they’d get.”

But first, things really had to change, and when his partners revealed their plan to go in the opposite direction—to change the restaurants into nightclubs, emphasizing the three d’s of “dancing and drinking in a dark atmosphere”he decided it was time to get out. He sold them his share of the pie and settled down to the life of a brahmacari at the Brooklyn Hare Krsna temple.

This life was not for him, however, and he soon met with Romapada Swami, Yajna Purusa, and other local devotees to talk about opening a unique prasadam restaurant on New York’s trendy Lower East Side. He hit the streets, looking for just the right location. His contacts from previous endeavors bore fruit. He eventually found the ideal spot, and he used the last of his savings, going into debt, to hire contractors, carpenters, painters—you name it—to bring the place up to speed. His experience in the restaurant business paid off, not only in these initial stages, which he oversaw every step of the way, but when it finally opened: The major city newspapers and magazines—from New York magazine to the New York Times—covered the story as soon as the buzz reached their ears. They knew of Khalil Houri from his two successful restaurants and were eager to be the first to explore his third, though this, obviously, was different from the others.

Radha Vegetarian Restaurant, his latest venture, draws fully on his many-faceted life, including his Greek Lebanese origin, his experience living in India and amongst Hare Krsna devotees, and his French education in New York City. Nestled in the heart of Manhattan’s famous Ludlow Street, this forty-seat restaurant is a multicultural extravaganza of organic vegetarian cuisine, boasting a menu that is eighty-five percent vegan. This is important among New York’s hip youth, who are often extreme in their vegetarianism.

That being said, the preps are mouth-wateringly delicious. Favorites include “Asian Temptation,” a deep bowl of stir-fried vegetables with grilled tempeh (a protein-rich soy product that simulates the taste of meat), topped with sweet & sour Teriyaki sauce, served with soba buckwheat noodles or organic brown rice. Or there is “Mediterranean Delight,” a spaghetti pasta with savory kofta balls made of delicately spiced grated cauliflower topped with homemade marinara sauce. The distinguishing quality of Radha restaurant, however, is the prasadam factor: Each day all of the sumptuous dishes are lovingly offered to Krsna by Apurva Dasa, a cook renowned throughout ISKCON as a chef supreme.

The Right Cook for the Job

Apurva joined the Hare Krsna movement in 1971 and has been cooking in award-winning ISKCON restaurants ever since. Yajna called and asked if he’d be interested in working in New York with Kaliya’s new restaurant. Realizing that there hasn’t been an ISKCON restaurant in the Big Apple for almost twenty-five years, he quickly agreed. As Kaliya and Yajna conveyed their plan, Apurva recalled something an early devotee once told him—that Srila Prabhupada had envisioned New York City being “conquered” by prasadam distribution. In addition, there was an element of serendipity. Apurva had recently closed his restaurant in North Carolina. So he was free to devote himself to this one.

“When I saw how Kaliya personally worked from morning to night to ready the place,” says Apurva, “I knew this would be a success. This is the kind of dedication needed to make a New York restaurant happen.”

Apurva was also impressed with the neighborhood and the tasteful dīcor of the place, lovingly arranged and designed by Kaliya.

“When I say that the ambiance and dīcor are awesome, the energy of the place, everything first-class, I mean it. When I first walked in, I knew I was home. I just had to be part of this. I was also enlivened by the up-and-coming neighborhood.”

When you walk in, you see Sri Radha’s picture on the wall, beautifully framed and in a modern 3D format. If you pick up the menu, you read, right on the cover: “Sri Radha is known as the Queen of Love and Devotion. She is wonderfully fragrant and enchantingly beautiful. Her bodily hue is golden, as glorious as the full moon. She is the personification of compassion and kindness to all living beings.” If that doesn’t tempt you to taste her cooking, nothing will.

Satyaraja Dasa, a disciple of Srila Prabhupada, is a BTG associate editor. He has written over twenty books. He lives with his wife and daughter near New York City.