Mata G Featured in Alibi’s Made in the Neighborhood

Gurubachan Kaur Khalsa has probably fed every vegan and vegetarian in the city at least once, and her restaurant hasn’t even had its real opening yet.

Mata G Vegetarian Kitchen soft opened about four months ago to test out menus and business hours. Khalsa, the owner and chef, says that she’s been surprised at the steady stream of customers they’ve had with almost no advertising. “We’ve been having so much traffic already, and it’s all word of mouth.”

The new carry-out-focused vegetarian restaurant is at the corner of Silver and Amherst in the Nob Hill Business Center, which also houses La Montañita Co-Op. The presence of the Co-Op is probably responsible for many of Mata G’s early customers, as the clientele of an all-organic grocery co-op is going to have some crossover with that of a vegetarian restaurant. But some of the folks who walk in aren’t even vegetarian—they just like the convenience of the packaged carry-out meals. When I visit Mata G, one man I chat with in line says he’s a meat-eater most of the time, but he’s been coming to Mata G’s to pick up dinner every Wednesday since they opened.

Khalsa dishes out two plates of the day’s special for her and me to share while we talk. She’s dressed in all white, a Sikh dastaar on her head and fine silver bracelets on each wrist. Her accent is totally unclockable to me, due to a truly international personal history: She grew up in Mexico City in a Lebanese family, then moved to Boston and worked in the largely Indian and Pakistani Sikh community there in the ’70s. She worked as a cook at the Sikh temple in Boston for many years, blending the Indian recipes of her gurus with the Lebanese and Mexican cooking she learned from her childhood. This cross-cultural cuisine has informed the way she cooks now at Mata G, which serves a different special entrée every day of the week.

Read the full article at The Alibi here.