The other day, while driving through Mayfair West, something caught my eye as I passed the striking Hindu temple on Bellona Road: a sign for Shayona. I quickly hung a left onto St. Gothard Avenue and saw an even bigger sign for Shayona Express, right at the entrance to the temple. There was a security guard seated outside; I pulled over and rolled down my window.

Shayona sign outside the BAPS Hindy temple in Mayfair

The sign I saw outside the temple. Shayona Express opened here about nine months ago.

“Is Shayona, the restaurant, in there now?!” I asked the security guard, barely able to control my excitement. He smiled curiously, probably wondering why I was asking a question with such an obvious answer.

“Yes,” he said.

“So I can go in there and eat?” I don’t know why it took me so long to believe that there could be a restaurant inside of a temple.

“Yes!” he said.

Shayona, a vegetarian restaurant run by the Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS) socio-spiritual Hindu organization, was one of my favorite local Indian restaurants when it was on Church Street in Mayfair. (I looked back through my archives and realized that while I mentioned Shayona in a couple of blog posts, I’ve never devoted an entire post to it before.) That location closed several years ago, and I somehow never made it to the new Shayona up north in Illovo.

Concurrently, I’d been driving past this striking, peach-colored mandir (Hindu temple) in Mayfair West for years, telling myself each time that I must go inside and check it out someday.

Now I’d accidentally discovered that Shayona is back in Mayfair West — less than five minutes from my house in Brixton — and it’s inside the temple that I’ve always wanted to visit. The universe was telling me something. So a couple of days later, my friend Sebo and I went to Shayona for lunch and a visit to the mandir.

The mandir, which used to be a Dutch Reformed church before BAPS took it over in the 1990s.

Lunch at Shayona

The Mayfair West Shayona is an “express” location, so it’s smaller with a more limited menu than some of the other locations (especially the newest location at the enormous BAPS cultural complex in Northriding, which I haven’t been to yet). But the express café has a great little shop, selling affordable spices, lentils, and other vegetarian foods, as well as all the delicious curries, rotis, samoosas, Indian sweetmeats, etc., which I remember from the old Mayfair restaurant. The café/shop is inside the temple complex, across an interior courtyard from the mandir.

Heather shopping at the Shayona Express shop

Browsing the grocery options at Shayona Express. There are a couple of tables at the back for sit-down dining. (Photo: Sebo Marobela)

I bought some pink dal (a.k.a. red lentils) to take home.

The most interesting aspect of BAPS food is that it’s not only vegetarian, but also doesn’t contain any onions or garlic. While this may sound like a recipe for blandness, the curries are extremely flavorful. Some of the dishes contain dairy (like paneer, which is a type of cheese, and ghee), so Shayona’s food is vegetarian but not necessarily vegan. There are no eggs in any of the food.

Sebo and I each ordered the Gujarati thali platter, which comes with three rotating curries, two rotis, rice, and a poppadum for R85 (about $5). The curry on the left is brinjal and potato, the one in the middle is oil dal (which tastes way better than it sounds), and the one on the right is paneer curry (my favorite). I’m a big fan of the light, well-seasoned poppadoms, which I often find dry and tasteless at other Indian restaurants.

Shayona also serves (among other things) vegetarian samoosas, masala tea, and western dishes like pasta, sandwiches, and pizza, all made according to BAPS dietary requirements.

I took home a couple of the light yellow Indian sweetmeats (which are not meats at all, but rather very rich, candy-like desserts) in the center — they’re delicious.

Pamela, a longtime staff member at Shayona.

Inside the Mandir

The mandir is open to the public, so Sebo and I had a look inside after lunch. However, the shrine inside the mandir is covered by a curtain from noon to 4:00 p.m. — the deities’ time to rest — every day. I went back the next morning to take pictures of the shrine.

Lebo, a BAPS employee, shows us the way into the mandir.

The front entrance (we actually entered from the side).

The pretty stained glass windows are original from back when the mandir was a church.

I love Hindu temple decor — it’s so extra.

More.

Look at this colorful dome! It’s hard to see in the photo but the rings are full of peacocks, which are considered auspicious animals in Hindu culture. (This totally makes sense — peacocks are also extra.)

The shrine, which was covered with a curtain the first time I went in.

Deity details.

Note the clock in the bottom-right corner of this photo; it was 11:45 when I visited. Just before 12, the temple priest came and closed the curtain so the deities could rest until 4.

Mahesh, one of the mandir’s volunteers, gave me a proper tour and explained the history of BAPS and the meaning of all the dieties when I went back on the second day. It’s far too much to share in this post, but maybe I’ll do another post about the BAPS organization in the future.

Shayona Mayfair is open seven days a week from 10:00 a.m. until 7:00 p.m. (8:00 p.m. on Sundays). It’s at the corner of St. Gothard Ave. and Bellona Road in Mayfair West.