A longtime vegetarian restaurant in Dallas closes: Cosmic cafe, which has served unpretentious vegetarian food on Oak Lawn Avenue for more than 25 years, is closing to make way for a yoga studio.
They close on October 17th.
The new tenant will be the Sun Yoga Center, which is moving into the premises and opening a facility that will offer yoga and meditation classes on a donation basis. According to the owners of the yoga center, the opening will take place on November 6th.
“We have made plans to reopen yoga and meditation classes in the space now known as the Cosmic Café on 2912 Oak Lawn Avenue in Dallas,” the statement said. “Our focus will be on what we can offer our community, not what our community can offer us.”
Founded as the Cosmic Cup by friends Praveen Sachdev and Kumar Pallana of the Dallas community, Cosmic Cafe is a whimsical counterpoint to Dallas’ brilliant personality. (It also had a temporary location in Austin.)
As one of the few vegetarian restaurants in Dallas at the time, it was also a focal point for vegetarian artists and celebrities walking around town.
The food was your prototypical post-hippie vegetarian with a cozy warmth in dishes like the unmistakable Buddha’s Delight with curry vegetables of the day, dahl, samosa, pappadam, rice and naan; and Cosmic Stir with fried asparagus, broccoli, peppers, onions, carrots, pumpkin, sugar peas and tofu, sautéed with yogurt-ginger sauce and served over rice with a salad.
Most dishes were less than $ 10, so it attracted younger diners and students and gave it a touch of hipness.
A sumptuous interior with Hindu artwork, Buddha statues, and other Indian motifs added to the peaceful hippie vibe, and a porch overlooking Oak Lawn Avenue, which was covered with Tibetan prayer flags like a beacon, gave it a terrace, that was ahead of its time. It also had a meditation center on the second floor that held yoga classes so the precedent was there.
Sachdev and Pallana ran the restaurant until Pallana got acting roles in a number of Wes Anderson films including Bottle Rocket, Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums.
He moved to California to pursue a film career, and Sachdev took over the cafe full time. (Pallana died in 2013.)
The cafe will be open for the rest of this week so fans have time to pay their respects and get a final taste.
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