Restaurant aRoqa, on Ninth Ave. between 22nd and 23rd Sts., serves Indian food in smaller, tapas-style portions.
Indian food, tapas style in Chelsea
BY GABE HERMAN
For owner Monica Saxena, her Indian restaurant
aRoqa is more than just another local
place to eat in Chelsea.
“I dreamt of this for 20 years,” Saxena said recently
while sitting at a table at aRoqa. “I look at it
as a dream, and a dreamer.”
Saxena lived in New York in the 1990s and
would moonlight as a restaurant hostess. She said
she was always interested in the food industry, and
wanted to understand how restaurants differentiate
themselves.
“I had wanted to open an Indian restaurant since
I’m in my 20s,” she said, “because I love feeding
people and entertaining people.”
But that thought was put on the back burner for
many years. She moved to California in the late
’90s, working in the technology industry for 14
years at Qualcomm.
She moved back to New York in 2013, and that
was when the restaurant idea started to become reality.
But Saxena didn’t want to open just another Indian
restaurant. She felt the market was saturated
with curry houses that served big portions.
“I love tapas and I love the appetizer portions of
menus,” she said. “For me, it was, why can’t Indian
food be served in a tapas-plate concept? And with
good cocktails.”
She felt smaller portions would also be better for
people going out on a date, and wanted to create a
place that was fun, plus with a “nice, warm, welcoming
environment,” she said.
The restaurant’s name comes from the Indian
“roka” ceremony, where family and friends celebrate
the engagement of a couple.
The menu includes dinner plates, including
shared-plate options, along with lunch specials and
weekend brunch.
Saxena found the location at 206 Ninth Ave., between
W. 22nd and 23rd Sts. It was a burnt-out
space, formerly a Chinese restaurant. She started to
implement her vision of it, decorating in a modern
chic style. She found a local Chelsea artist, Anthony
Gaugler, whose work lines the walls. The restaurant
opened for business in June 2017.
Chelsea was a great fi t for aRoqa, Saxena
thought, because it had very few Indian restaurants
and it was an artistic and creative neighborhood
that would be more open to the new concept of
combining Indian food and tapas.
“There’s no better place than the Chelsea people,
who I feel are adventurous,” she said. “The neighborhood
has really taken to us.”
There were some early struggles for aRoqa, however.
A year into opening the restaurant as an investor,
circumstances led Saxena to get involved full
COURTESY AROQA
time in running and managing the operation personally.
This included building relationships with
local customers, and ultimately turning the business
around.
She remembered thinking at the time, “I’m 53
and I want to run one last race of my life.”
After taking over operations, Saxena didn’t sleep
for the fi rst week. The second week, she said she
cried. But then she decided to learn the restaurant
business inside and out.
The city’s restaurant industry is competitive and
very diffi cult, she noted. There are high rents and
steep food prices, a higher minimum wage, and now
paid sick leave in the city, plus the mayor’s push for
two weeks’ paid vacation for workers, which Saxena
recently wrote about in an op-ed in this paper.
Yet, her business is doing well, she said, and
continues to increase every month. And she noted
that the success of any small business comes with
a close team that works together. Saxena cited the
chef Manni, mixologist Prasad and fl oor captain
Ashish, “who helped us pull together to create a
success story.”
She remains determined to continue making her
dream restaurant work.
“I’m running that race now,” she said, “and not
ready to give up.”
More information on aRoqa can be found at aroqanyc.
com.
Schneps Media TVG September 12, 2019 15