• Courtesy
• From left: Sandeep Kumar, Mandeep "Sonu" Kumar, Sharandeep Matri and Vishal Attri of Namaste Garden

Chittenden County's newest Indian restaurant is taking a different approach: It's entirely vegetarian.

Namaste Garden will open at 34 Park Street in Essex Junction on Monday, September 26. The restaurant will serve vegetarian and vegan specialties from north and south India, owner Sharandeep Matri told Seven Days. The menu includes a wide variety of curries, samosas and pakoras, as well as traditional sweets such as gulab jamun, ladoo and barfi that are made in-house — a rarity in the local Indian restaurant scene, Matri said.

Matri owns Namaste Garden with her husband, Vishal Attri, and her brother Sandeep Kumar. It is the trio's first restaurant, though Matri has catered from home in the past, and her family ran a restaurant in Punjab, India.

The vegetarian eatery takes over the space formerly occupied by the Food Bar, which closed in July. Open from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily, Namaste Garden will offer late breakfast, lunch and dinner for on-site dining, takeout, delivery and catering. Beer and wine will be served.

"We want to cook meals on demand with fresh spices and ingredients so our customers can taste real Indian food," Matri said. "And if they're Indian, they can have that back-home taste."