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Seven years ago, Roshan Shivalkar was a dishwasher at Falafel Bite in Sunnyvale. Now, he runs his own restaurant out of that same location, serving cuisine from his hometown of Ratnagiri, India, with his mom, sister and cousin.
“Never in my life did I think I could run a business,” Shivalkar said.
Surmai, a coastal Maharashtrian sit-down restaurant specializing in fish, opened March 17, exactly four years after Shivalkar opened his first restaurant Puranpoli, a fast-casual vegetarian eatery in Santa Clara. Much of the food at Surmai features coconut and rice, staple crops of Ratnagiri, and imported king mackerel (surmai) and pomfret (paplet) are prominently featured on the menu.
“The taste of that fish is really different from the tilapia and the salmon that you get in the Bay Area,” he said. “It’s just like nostalgia, it’s like a memory. You’ll see a lot of people literally crying while eating food. For us Indians being in the Bay Area, we miss our families, but with that level of magnitude we miss the food.”
On Surmai’s menu you’ll find appetizers like the kolambi fry (rava-fried tiger prawns cooked with Malvani spices), specials like surmai rava fish fry (rava-fried king mackerel) and drinks like solkadhi (a popular drink in coastal Maharashtra made from coconut milk and kokam).
“Everybody from my town comes here and becomes a software engineer, or they do MBA like me, and they don’t go into restaurants,” Shivalkar said. “You see North Indian and South Indian restaurants in the Bay Area, but there’s nothing from the western part of India.”
Shivalkar came to the U.S. for college in 2016 and took a job as a dishwasher at Falafel Bite. Working his way up his way up to manager, he saw the opportunity to launch his own concept when a new Santa Clara location of Falafel Bite started to fail. The husband-and-wife owners allowed him to purchase half of the business and change the concept to Puranpoli. Despite opening Puranpoli the same day the Bay Area’s shelter-in-place order took effect, his restaurant was a success.
“I think working in the restaurant is finding solutions,” he said. “And I think God has gifted me with finding solutions no matter how tough the situation. This was the missing piece of my life: the restaurant industry.”
Shivalkar said Surmai has received immense support since its opening, with wait times as long as an hour and a half.
“We close at 10 o’clock in the night, but we took the last order at 11:30 because the wait was so long,” he said. “It’s absolutely crazy, and God has been very, very kind to me.”
Shivalkar’s team is made up of his sister, mother, cousin and American brother-in-law, who inspired one of Surmai’s menu items.
“Because of him, I put salmon steak fry on the menu,” Shivalkar said. “He was telling me, ‘Roshan, white people just love salmon. Trust me, buddy.’ And I trusted him, and we’re selling salmon here.”
Shivalkar said many Americans think of Indian food as samosas, paneer, chicken tikka masala and naan, but there are so many unique regional cuisines to try.
“There’s a lot more to the food,” he said. “There’s a lot more that my culture needs to show the world. That’s the goal. The goal is to bring back my culture (by) proudly and loudly serving Maharashtrian to my people, plus everybody who is not aware of this cuisine.”
Surmai, 500 Lawrence Expressway, Sunnyvale; 408-736-2411. Open Monday, Wednesday and Thursday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Friday 11 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. and 5-9:45 p.m., Saturday 11 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. and 6-9:45 p.m. and Sunday 11 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. and 6-9 p.m.