The Kingston Springs-based Punjabi Dhaba restaurant opens at 08:00 am on Sundays. The restaurant serves sleepy-eyed truckers who come from the nearby truck stop for morning parathas and curries as takeout options before one more day behind the wheel.
Roadside restaurants in India, such as this, are called ‘dhabas’ and are common in that nation’s Punjab region. These restaurants are scattered over the US highways. In 2019, siblings James and Karan Singh started the restaurant around 30 kilometers west of the downtown Nashville area for the increasing number of Sikh truckers.
In the nation, dhabas pop up on well-known trucking routes, particularly along the Interstate 40 highway. Taste of India at a San Jon gas station and New Mexico’s Spicy Bite are two of those restaurants. Spicy Bite features a big lunch buffet that has many reviews on the Yelp website from hungry drivers with five-star ratings.
Keep going east on Interstate 40 beyond Texas’ Amarillo city, and you will reach a place with not a lot going to happen. Only, there is a Punjabi Restaurant billboard at Truck Stop I-40 that towers over a highway stretch from Texas to Oklahoma and that uses Hindi to advertise fresh food.
The first location of Punjabi Dhaba was a bit off Interstate 40 at the Cedar Grove-based 101 Travel Plaza. Word often travels quickly within Sikh truckers in the trucking sector. For this reason, the Punjabi Dhaba business grew fast and remained steady. Nevertheless, the coronavirus epidemic affected the sector badly. Consequently, the brothers chose to close their restaurant, even though James Singh realized that it would not be a permanent closure.
James Singh stated that the epidemic gave them an opportunity to shift their business focus and that almost every dhaba is located at a truck stop or gas station. The brothers wanted the restaurant to cater to truck drivers and be one that the locals would like to visit.
Earlier in 2021, the brothers started the restaurant at the Kingston Springs location. Now situated off Exit 188 of Interstate 40 along Petro Road, Punjabi Dhaba sits directly on the other side of the street with a truck stop. The old Punjabi Dhaba was as basic a location as you would expect a diner at a US truck stop to be. On the other hand, the new location greets Kingston Springs natives and road-weary truck drivers with colorful Christmas lighting and chandeliers. The log cabin offers strong Tennessee vibes, whereas the films on the TV set above the restaurant door are purely Bollywood.
The brothers upgraded the restaurant menu alongside the location change. It is a more extensive menu that meets their objective of serving truckers, the natives, and drivers from places such as Bellevue for well-known dishes such as chicken tikka masala. The restaurant offers customers food items made according to their requirements. Karan Singh’s spouse Kiranjit Kaur and other family members work in the open kitchen or behind the cash register. On the other hand, the brothers go from one place to another out front, speaking to customers waiting for their orders.
Trucker Jan Pal Singh came to the restaurant in the recent past for chai as well as onion- and tomato-filled parathas before taking off to Florida. The trucker stated that he visits the restaurant as everything here is healthful and freshly created and that he does not consume fast food.
Texas driver Abdi Ibrahim, too, does not consume fast food. Instead, Ibrahim goes to the maximum dhabas, including this one, along his route between the east and the east. As for Ibrahim, no food item at Punjabi Dhaba is processed. Ibrahim stated that almost every truck stop only has fast food items, which is an issue as many truckers have high cholesterol, obesity and diabetes.
Ibrahim is among the increasing number of truckers from the East African community. Another reason why Ibrahim visits dhabas is that these locations serve food that is almost the same as what he would find in his native country Somalia. That is especially true in terms of spices. Ibrahim can contact Punjabi Dhaba, and the restaurant staff can prepare anything for him because they understand what he likes.
In the morning, Punjabi Dhaba feeds time-pressed truck drivers before drivers pop in to have dinner and stay on the other side of the street for a ten-hour rest. Locally, the rest period is called a reset. On almost every day, at the above-mentioned time, the restaurant stays open for people who wish to have dinner or lunch. At this time, the restaurant parking lot usually becomes full of people who pop in with smaller vehicles than semis. The locals and truckers as well as a few road-trippers await homemade Indian-style food in this restaurant.
According to James Singh, many customers visit it when traveling in trucks, and its patrons come from all places.