A Holiday Feast Fit for a Turkey : Krishnas’ Restaurant Menu Is Animal Life-Friendly

An unusual and eye-catching invitation graces the message board in front of Govinda’s restaurant in North Park.

“Please join us and our live turkey for Thanksgiving,” the message reads. Above it is a bright, cartoon-like illustration of an avocado, a carrot, a tomato and a banana standing with small fists raised in defiance.

True, the only turkey at Govinda’s today will be the live one waddling about in a pen outside the restaurant, provoking the interest of curious passers-by. But the cooks inside will do their best to mold chunks of tofu into the approximate size and shape of slices of turkey breast, in hopes of pleasing those conditioned to eating turkey on Thanksgiving while giving them the sensation of a “karma-free” holiday meal.

‘No Reason to Kill’

“There’s no reason you have to kill anything, and it’ll taste and look much the same,” said restaurant manager Don Grant.

Grant, a 44-year-old Englishman with bright blue eyes and short-cropped blond hair, attributes his youthful looks to “blue-green algae and plenty of yogurt.” He, like the other restaurant employees, is a Hare Krishna, though he sports no shaven head or flowing orange robe.

“We don’t want to have people working here with shaved heads,” Grant said. “This is a place with a middle-of-the-road atmosphere. Some people might find it scary to go to our temple, but we want them to feel comfortable coming in here.”

In fact, the words Hare Krishna are not printed in any conspicuous place outside or within the small business on University Avenue in North Park, and, despite such subtle tip-offs as the piped-in Indian music and pamphlets on reincarnation on the tables, it might be easy to miss the connection between the restaurant and the ancient Eastern religion.

Grant, formerly a professional soccer player in England, also goes by the guru-given name of Dharma Vidya, which in Sanskrit means “knower of religious principles.” Though he has been at Govinda’s only four months and has never operated a restaurant before, Grant knows what the public wants. Already he has established a small boutique and deli in the front of the restaurant, and plans to start offering yoga classes in the back room.

“This New Age movement is very nice, because it shows that people are having some awakening, becoming more conscious of the need for a balance between the physical and the spiritual,” he said. “Even USA Today recently printed a front-page article telling of the benefits of practicing yoga and a vegetarian diet to prevent heart attacks.”

In addition to the yoga classes, Grant has brought in Indian musicians to serenade diners and hopes to add other activities as well. “I want to try to make it a little cultural center. . . . I know the trend is going that way.”

To draw vegetarians who don’t want to miss out on the fun of a traditional Thanksgiving meal, today’s menu at Govinda’s includes tofu turkey with whole wheat stuffing, nut loaf with gravy, cranberry sauce, baked potatoes and pumpkin pie--plus the restaurant’s usual cafeteria-style array of steamed vegetables, brown rice, salad and unusual sauces. All natural, all free of preservatives, pesticides and other nasty substances.

But to the Krishna devotees who work here, it’s more than just good, simple vegetarian fare. To them it is food that has been approved of by God, prepared in a proper karma-free fashion.

“As soon as we cook, we offer our food up to God,” said Grant. “He won’t want it, of course--He already has everything. But He’ll be glad we offered it and hopefully He’ll say ‘Thank you very much,’ and then we can serve it to our customers.”

This practice, Grant said, is based on the belief that nothing on earth belongs to any one person, so food must be offered back to the creator. “To take it without doing so would mean you’re a thief,” Grant said.

The offering process, called “prasadim,” is accomplished with the aid of a small shrine set up on a shelf in the restaurant’s clean, white kitchen, next to the napkins and above the muffin tins. Two ornate Indian figurines stand inside the wooden altar, which is flanked by framed photographs of important gurus and illuminated by a small desk lamp. The offering is concluded by chanting the Hare Krishna mantra three times.

“ Hare Krishna just means ‘all attractive God’ in English,” Grant said. “God himself isn’t Hindu, Muslim, Catholic or any particular religion. . . . Our religion is just a science for understanding God.”

Not Some Grumpy Boss

Inside the kitchen, workers bustled to prepare for the holiday meal--peeling potatoes, setting pumpkin pies out to cool--smiling all the while. “Working for God-consciousness is not like working for some grumpy boss,” Grant said.

The workers are paid, he said, but all profits from the restaurant are recycled back to the Krishna temple.

“It is a nice place to work,” said Laksmi-Narayana das, a longtime employee who said he was a regular customer back when the restaurant was located in Leucadia. The operation was moved to North Park four years ago because the first kitchen was too small, making it necessary for devotees to cook all the food at their temple in Pacific Beach and transport it to the restaurant.

Back in the front of the restaurant, Grant offered a ready smile and a handshake to arriving customers. An elderly woman greeted him warmly, then turned to tell a visitor: “Animals are your friends. Don’t eat them.”

As the woman and her husband gravitated toward the salad bar, Grant remarked: “Nice people come in here. Because they’re vegetarian, they’re more peaceful.”

The premise of karma-free eating, he explained, is simply to avoid eating animals “so that at the end of your life you haven’t caused too much suffering to some live creature.” Bad karma, he said, is accumulated by doing violence to animals or people.

Gets You in the End

“Even if you get away with it, the law of karma will get you in the end when you leave your body,” Grant said. Wars, pestilence and disease are all examples of collective karmic pay-back, he said.

Krishna beliefs dictate that a person born into poverty, unhappiness or undue suffering is most likely being punished for sins committed in past lives, Grant said. If a person is born into a rich family, or is exceptionally beautiful or talented, he or she has been rewarded for good spiritual behavior in previous lives, he said.

In addition, various living creatures occupy different levels of consciousness on the scale of life, Grant said.

“If you’re eating frogs’ legs or ants, your karma won’t be so bad, because they have a very low level of consciousness. The worst thing you can do is eat a cow.”

The Krishnas believe that, starting with the one-celled amoebas, the consciousness of living creatures evolves upward through fish, reptiles, birds, mammals and, finally, people. Every person’s soul has passed through all of the lower stages before becoming human, Grant said.

But even former Big Mac addicts may make amends, as long as they adopt a meatless life style, chant the mantra and promise to adhere to other religious restrictions, including a ban on gambling, premarital sex, drugs, alcohol, tea, coffee and soft drinks.

“We prefer them to follow the duties if they can, but everybody has a free choice,” Grant said. “Of course, every now and then one of our devotees will meet a pretty girl and they’ll end up having illicit sex . . . but if a person’s fallen, that’s OK. Unless they’ve carried out some abominable act, we’ll forgive them.”