Shanti Restaurant's Owners Embracing Roslindale Commmunity

Shanti Restaurant owners Rokeya and Solomon Chowdury, a happily married couple living in Roxbury, spoke with Roslindale Patch about their new Indian restaurant at 4197 Washington St., Roslindale. The restaurant is open for lunch, including a $8.95 buffet from 11:30 a.m. - 3 p.m., dinner, takeout or delivery at 617-325-3900. This is the second Shanti Restaurant, with the first being in Dorchester. 

Patch: Why did you start Shanti Restaurant? 

Rokeya: His family started Shanti because they didn’t have any place to eat Indian food in Dorchester 13 years ago. And so together with people already in the restaurant business helped them open. The best plan is if you want to eat something, just open it, so you have it all the time.

Solomon: I did real estate. Now I'm mostly in the restaurant since the market crashed. I've been focusing more on the restaurant.

Rokeya: A lot of our guests are already regulars at our Dorchester location. There’s some who work in Dorchester and live in Roslindale and now can pick up on the way home here instead over there.

Patch: What do you two do for the business? 

Rokeya: I’m more customer relations, reaching out to the communtiy and promotion. And he’s more of the businesss side.

Patch: Why did you choose to open in Roslindale?

Rokeya: He introduced me to the Roslindale area. His partners had a real estate office in Jamaica Plain. We would come into Roslindale Square to hang out to go to the Boston Cheese Cellar and then brunch at Sugar. We were walking around and we noticed there was an opening for something like this because the closest Indian restaurant was in West Roxbury and Jamaica Plain. It was a few years, we kept an eye out for a small little space. So when this one came into the market we pretty much saw it, and it’s the same size as our Dorchester one, so we put down the deposit the same day. The size reminded us of our Dorchester location.

Patch: What changes did you make to the location?

Rokeya: We remodeled. We closed up the kitchen because it was an open kitchen. The tandoori oven gives off a lot of smoke. 

Patch: Is the menu different than Shanti in Dorchester?

Solomon: Exactly the same menu as in Dorchester.

Rokeya: Each month we do different specials that Chef Andy (Anand Pokhrel) creates. (Chef Andy is originally from Nepal, and lives in Malden now.)

Patch: How has it been so far since opening in early March?

Rokeya: Roslindale’s been very welcoming. Even when we were under construction we had a lot of neighbors asking when we were going to open. It was surprising how many neighbors already know about us from our Dorchester location.

Patch: What is special about Shanti Restaurant?

Royeka: One of things is that (Solomon) loves Indian food, so he seeks it out for the best. I think what you enjoy at the end of the day is what you want to serve to your guests. He loves Indian food even after owning Shanti for 13 years. If he goes without it for one week he goes through withdrawal. Shanti Restaurant in Dorchester was named Boston Magazine's best Indian restaurant in 2012.

Sometimes you use the same base for the red meat, vegetable dishes, but that’s not how we cook at home. We don’t use the same base for everything. So one of the things is the taste really comes out when you have different bases for different things. Chef Andy has different recipes for all sauce bases like seafood, meat, red sauces, and vegetable dishes. There’s always a sauce base. That’s one of the distinctions.

Patch: What’s your favorite dish?

Royeka: Chef Andy can tell you, I love all the tandoori dishes. I order them most of the time. The salmon, the chicken tikka, or lamb kebob.

Chef Andy: For kids I recommend the chicken malai – it’s really mild with a creamy base.

Royeka: It’s marinated for 12 hours.

Solomon: Vindhi masala and goat curry.

Rokeya: (Once you fill out a customer comment card) For birthdays we send out a $20 gift certificate to use in your birthday month. 

Patch: How much is cream a secret to Indian cooking?

Rokeya: There is a lot of dairy - yogurt, cream - it is very mprotant. Dairy is used in many dishes, but our sweets. Like lassis use a yogart base. The mango lassis. We use a lot of dairy.

Solomon: Most of the korma dishes are cooked with cream. One of the things is paneer – we make it here ourselves. Paneer is the Indian cheese.

Rokeya: We use a lot of milk. It’s a little firmer than ricotta cheese. It’s pressed down and chopped into cubes. It's used in saag paneer, the tandoori dishes, you can have the cheese grilled. It’s the only cheese we have.

Patch: Do you have alcohol license?

Rokeya: Not yet. We're in the process.

Solomon: We wanted to get the restaurant opened and then look for support from the community to go apply for one. It’s a small restaurant so we can’t get afford to get a $100,000 beer/wine license. That’s not really economic for us.