Chris Therrien
Last month, KSherpa Dinner House quietly shuttered its Montpelier location at 28 Main Street and reopened under a new name, “Star Kitchen Indian Nepali Restaurant,” at 237 N. Main Street in Barre. Fans of KSherpa will be happy to know the menu at this new Star Kitchen location is similar to the former, yet now with a notable selection of affordable burgers.
KSherpa faced numerous difficulties since it first opened in January 2022. Following in the footsteps of Montpelier’s first South Asian restaurant, Namaste Indian Nepali Kitchen, which arrived on the scene in August 2020 when it opened in the former location of Down Home Kitchen, KSherpa, with a nearly identical menu, opened in January 2022 a short distance away in a spot adjacent to the Savoy Theater. Both restaurants ran concurrently, each having its own avid fans, yet Namaste always seemed a bit busier, possibly because of its more central location, and also given the fact that it opened over a year earlier, giving it time to build a larger customer base.
After the July flood in 2023, KSherpa took a longer time to reopen than other businesses in town because of an inability to obtain a Small Business Administration SBA loan through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Having reportedly incurred an estimated $400,000 in flood damages between his restaurant in Montpelier and his house in Barre, owner Kamal Sherpa cited his tenuous immigration status as an obstacle to accessing the essential federal funds needed to recover. And when KSherpa finally did reopen in December 2023 (five and a half months after the flood), business was never quite the same. The dining room was never full, with take-out acting as the main revenue source, as some of their patrons noted.
Now, with the windows of the former KSherpa papered up, a new business has recently registered with the Vermont Secretary of State under the name of “Curry Leaf,” its owner named as Inderjeet Singh Saini. A quick online search reveals Saini owns two other “Curry Leaf” restaurants: one in Foxboro, Massachusetts, which opened in 2022, and another, which opened the following year in Concord, New Hampshire, in 2023. And, if online reviews are any indication, Montpelier will soon be presented with an exceptional South Asian dining experience in both food and service.
A common complaint with many eateries — particularly in Vermont — is that food items labeled spicy or hot on their menus invariably are not, this presumably to cater to Americans’ palates. Apparently, this is not the case with Curry Leaf, however, as multiple reviews confirm: “They aren’t joking about the spice level,” and, “If you like things hot, their normal is spot on,” also, “The heat level can be intense, but not overpowering.” So, rest assured, lovers of spicy food, such as myself, will not be disappointed when they request the spicing amped up higher.
The menus at both Curry Leaf locations list various meat, vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free options, along with a daily bento-style lunch menu for under $15 with a choice of appetizer and one or two entrees, along with supplemental items such as a choice of Indian flatbreads, mango lassi, gulab jamun, or masala tea. There’s also a creative house cocktail list, including items such as Mumbai Mule and Boozy Mango Lassi, among others.
The Bridge has reached out to Saini, who has confirmed the menu at Curry Leaf in Montpelier will be similar to the one in Concord, New Hampshire. He anticipates his restaurant to be open by Feb. 1, given any unforeseen circumstances.
I, for one, will eagerly await their opening.
