Vatan: What’s Vegetarian Editorial Review

Vatan serves only vegetarian Gujarati food on Third Avenue in Kips Bay, so a vegetarian can eat everything on the table without asking a question. You pay one price, $45 a person, for an all-you-can-eat thali that servers bring to your table course by course. There are vegan, Jain, Swaminarayan, gluten-free, and nut-free versions of the same meal, too.

Find it at 409 3rd Ave, between 28th and 29th Streets. Vatan tells first-timers to look for the elephant out front. The 6 train stops at 28th Street, three blocks west.

What to order

No menu. You pick a thali, and the food keeps coming until you wave it off. On the standard version, your server starts with a shared appetizer tray of sev puri, ragda patis, samosas, muthia, batata vada, mirchi bhajia, khaman, and chana masala. Next, each diner gets a steel thali with small bowls of toor dal, curried potatoes, spinach and corn bhaji, chole, seasonal vegetables, kadhi, pulao, khichdi, papadam, and hot puris or rotis. Vatan rotates one dish by day: ful-cobi Monday through Thursday, and shahi paneer Friday through Sunday.

Refills are free. Every item in the main thali is unlimited, so ask for more of anything you liked. Dessert brings kheer, homemade Indian ice cream, and masala chai with cardamom, and you can request aam ras, a sweet mango pulp. Two specialties cost $8 extra each: rotla, a black millet flatbread with garlic chutney, jaggery, and ghee, and an eight-piece paani puri.

Vegan and other diets

Vegans should order the vegan thali, which Vatan says it makes strictly without dairy or honey. Same $45. On that tray you get bhel, curried moong beans, okra, and a vegan dessert of the day, and the masala chai is plain black tea. If you avoid dairy, skip the standard thali. New York Times critic Eric Asimov wrote that ghee flavors most of its dishes.

The kitchen

With no meat or fish in the building, a vegetarian has no shared grill or fryer to worry about. The kitchen does cook with dairy, which is why we rate cross-contamination 4 of 5. Allergies? Tell your server before you order, as Vatan asks every guest to do.

The room

The dining room looks like a village courtyard in Gujarat, with thatched roofs, hand-painted tables, small village dioramas, and a 20-foot banyan tree in the middle. Guests enter through a long hallway lined with bamboo, and then the courtyard opens up in front of you. Private parties of up to 140 people can book the space with custom menus. Big groups love it.

Hours, booking, and the fine print

Vatan serves dinner every day from 5:00 to 9:30 PM and lunch on Saturday and Sunday from noon to 3:00 PM. Holidays vary, so call (212) 689-5666. Bookings go through the Yelp link on Vatan’s site, so read the rules first. Vatan holds a table for 10 minutes past your reservation time. If you cancel within an hour of your booking, Vatan charges 50 percent of the estimated bill, and a no-show pays all of it.

Budget for more than $45, though. Vatan adds an 18 percent admin fee to every bill. And you can’t take leftovers home, so eat your fill at the table.