The Three Kitchens Of New Vrindaban

This story originally aired in the Feb. 16, 2025 episode of Inside Appalachia.

If you’re looking for food in New Vrindaban — the Hare Krishna community founded in West Virginia’s Northern Panhandle in the late 1960s — chances are your GPS will point you toward Govinda’s.

It’s a happening spot: an Indian-inspired vegetarian restaurant in the middle-of-nowhere West Virginia, just beside the community’s temple and a few miles from the opulent Palace of Gold.

But a trip to Govinda’s doesn’t offer a complete picture of the food traditions here in New Vrindaban. Food is central to the Hare Krishna faith, its traditions and worship. And Govinda’s is just one part of that.

“We do everything with food,” says Vasu Dev, who manages Govinda’s. “That’s why they call us the kitchen religion.”

To really learn about the food of New Vrindaban, you have to spend time in three different kitchens — each a little more sacred than the last.

The Restaurant Kitchen

The cooks at Govinda’s are deep into prep for the lunch rush. Cooks are swarming around, stirring pots and chopping vegetables. There is a small TV in the corner playing Indian ragas. But other than that, the kitchen is quiet.

There is no joking, no bellyaching, no idle chit chat at all. The kitchen staff is trying to keep their minds on God.

“Whatever consciousness you have when you’re preparing something, that’s going to be translated into the food,” Dev says. “If you’re cooking in a happy state, in a God-conscious state, people who are eating that are going to get the benefit.”

Dev comes from a big Italian Catholic family in Buenos Aires, Argentina, so the kitchens he grew up in were anything but quiet. He noticed Hare Krishna cooks did things a little differently after he joined the International Society of Krishna Consciousness in college. And it wasn’t just about the volume level.

“I remember the cooks (I grew up with), while they’re cooking, they’re tasting. ‘OK, let me taste this salt. Let me see how spicy it is.’ But we don’t do that,” Dev says.

You’ll never see a cook in Govinda’s kitchen tasting a sauce or even wafting the smell of a dish.

“We offer to God, to Krishna, and then we taste it,” Dev says. “When we’re preparing something, we’re preparing with a consciousness that we’re offering this to God.”

Before human tongue tastes any of the food prepared here, one of the cooks will present samples of each dish before a small altar that is set up on top of one of the kitchen’s coolers. The cook will then chant a mantra and ring a bell. They wait a few minutes, and then everyone else can enjoy the food as well.

“By doing that you get the blessings,” Dev says. “And when you eat that, your body is not only getting nutrients your body needs, but the spiritual benefit as well.”

Govinda’s serves up a lot of this spiritually-infused food, providing lunch and dinner to the dozens of pilgrims who visit each week. Much of the menu is Indian-inspired and — in keeping with Hare Krishna dietary restrictions — Govinda’s only serves vegetarian food. It’s a lot of healthy grains and legumes like rice and lentils, and lots and lots of fresh fruits and vegetables.

The International Society for Krishna Consciousness runs the largest vegetarian food distribution program in the world. It was born from an experience Bhaktivedanta Prabhupada, the movement’s founder, had when he was trying to get a temple built in Mayapur, India.

Prabhupada and his followers cooked rice for the people there, serving it on leaves. After they were done, they threw those leaves into a pile.

“He saw some kid looking into the trash for some food. And he said ‘That’s no good. Any person who lives around 10 miles of the temple should be fed by us,’” Dev says. “So out of that, a program called ‘Food for Life’ was born. Now it’s all around the world.”

That’s why seven days a week, 365 days a year, New Vrindaban provides a free breakfast and lunch to anyone who wants a seat at the table — whether you’re a resident, a pilgrim, or just someone in need of a meal. 

But that food does not come from Govinda’s restaurant kitchen. To see where these meals are prepared, you’ve got to head next door to the temple. 

The Devotee Kitchen

When Saci Suta gets up in the morning — usually around 4:00 a.m. — he showers to make himself ritually clean, then heads down to the temple to pray.

“We chant, then we keep ourselves pure, then we come to the kitchen,” Suta says. 

Suta runs New Vrindaban’s devotee kitchen. Each day, he consults with the temple president to see how many pilgrims stayed the night in the community’s lodge. Add to that any new cars that might be in the parking lot, and any full-time residents who might come down to the temple to eat. 

On the day I visited, Suta was preparing breakfast for 120 people and lunch for 150.  Luckily, he has a good bit of help. Just before daybreak, a parade of volunteers file into the devotee kitchen. They slip on some hairnets and with a little instruction, they set to work.

Devotees wash potatoes, chop pineapples, quarter oranges and dice jalapeños for curries, salads and quinoa. The kitchen gets some vegetables delivered from a local grower and uses some store-bought ingredients. But Suta also uses lots of vegetables grown on the property: milk from the community’s cows and dairy products, like ghee and yogurt, made from that milk.

The volunteer cooks remain quiet while they work, just like the cooks in the restaurant kitchen. They have come from all over — Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Michigan and Toronto, Canada — driving for hours and hours just to spend a few days here in the mountains. 

Suta said that’s common. Devotees come to New Vrindaban from everywhere.  People who can’t make it to the holy places in India are able to come here and receive the same spiritual benefit.

“That’s why everybody comes here,” Suta says.

It’s no wonder, then, that these pilgrims are more than happy to roll up their sleeves and help out in the kitchen.

When the food is done, Suta plates a sample of each dish into a small aluminum bowl. Those bowls go onto a 12 inch aluminum platter, which is placed before some fresh flowers, and images of Krishna and his consort, Radha and Prabhupada. Then, with the ringing of a bell and the chanting of a mantra, Suta offers the food to Krishna. 

Suta and his rotating kitchen crew go through this routine 730 times a year. But there are some jobs here volunteers can’t do — aren’t allowed to do. 

Just down the hall from the devotee kitchen, behind a closed but unassuming door, is another kitchen. 

Normally only the most committed devotees are allowed inside. But they made an exception for me, so I could see the kitchen where God’s food is prepared.

The Deity Kitchen

The cooks in New Vrindaban’s restaurant and devotee kitchens try to use the best ingredients in their cooking. But here in the deity kitchen, everything is held to a higher standard. 

“Except for olive oil and lemon juice, you won’t find anything canned or preserved in here,” says Anurhada Imseng, New Vrindaban’s communications director. “Everything is made fresh.”

It’s not just the ingredients: the pots, pans and utensils used in the deity kitchen are used here and nowhere else. They don’t even share a dishwasher with items from the other kitchens. 

Instead of the stainless steel dishes used in the restaurant and devotee kitchens, here Krishna dines from pure silver dishes. Everything is set aside for God, including the chef.

Rohini Kumar is from Peru. He’s known as a “twice-initiated” devotee. He’s taken additional vows to the faith, and as such has a special mantra that he chants three times a day. That allows him to prepare food for Krishna in this sanctified kitchen space.

“The idea is to meditate on Krishna. Everything you’re doing is dedicated to Krishna. I’m very happy cooking for the deity,” Kumar says.

Each day when he arrives, he sees what fresh vegetables are available. He lets his ingredients tell him what to cook.  

Once everything is ready, he transfers the food to the silver serving dishes. All plated up, they look like an appetizer platter someone ordered for their lunch. And now it’s ready for the table.

A Hare Krishna temple service is a multi-sensory experience. You hear the sound of conch shells, drumming, cymbals, chanting and singing. The smell of incense fills your nose. The shrine itself is visually overwhelming, with intricate wood and metalwork, stained glass and paintings.

It’s in this setting that devotees make a series of offerings. They change the clothes on the images of Krishna and Radha, removing their pajamas and putting on their day clothes. They wake up the deities with good morning prayers and small pieces of milk candy made in the deity kitchen. They offer fresh flowers and the elements of earth, wind, fire and water.

Finally, they offer the food Kumar has prepared. Devotees leave the plates before the statues of the deities for a short while so Krishna and Radha can enjoy them. Then a devotee takes the food back into the kitchen area where it is transferred out of the holy dishes and into less sanctified food containers. Then it can be eaten by anyone.

“It becomes really, intensively sanctified food,” Imseng says. “Everyone gets to eat it. Whoever gets there first gets to eat it.”

A Secret Fourth Kitchen?

The day before I arrived in New Vrindaban, Imseng texted me with a few requests. 

She asked that I keep myself ritually pure by showering when I woke up and putting on clean clothes. She also asked that I refrain from eating anything. Coffee was okay, thankfully.

On the day of my visit, I reported for hours before breakfast was served. I watched cooks prepare mounds of beautiful, fragrant food — and tried not to enjoy the sight or smell, out of respect for my hosts. Despite my efforts, I found it increasingly difficult to be conscious of anything but my hunger.

You can imagine my relief when Imseng approached me with a paper plate, heaped with food.

From the devotee kitchen there was a vegetable curry, some quinoa and Suta’s special buckwheat banana bread. From the deity kitchen, was an extra-sanctified potato pancake, some of those milk candies offered to Krishna as a morning snack and paneer cheese.

On nice days, the community dines outdoors on picnic tables in front of the temple. There’s also a dining hall inside the temple. It was pretty empty on the day I visited, so that’s where I ate, since I was recording my meal for the radio. 

I dug in with vigor. I’m not sure I could taste the spiritual aspect of the food, but it was evident these dishes were prepared with quality ingredients and a lot of care and attention.

Once my plate was clean, my hunger satiated and my attention renewed, I noticed someone else in the dining hall. It was  Raghavacharya Das, his wife Mansi and their two children. The family moved here just three months ago. They came from Silicon Valley, where she was a research scientist at Stanford and he worked at a financial technology startup. Now they are full time devotees.

As I was explaining the premise of this story, Raghavacharya shocked me.

“There is a fourth kitchen you have not heard of,” he told me. “If you take that food, it’s a totally different level of purity.”

I asked if he could show me this secret kitchen. But he said I didn’t quite understand what he meant. This fourth kitchen doesn’t stay in one place.

“It’s not a kitchen you can go and see,” Raghavacharya said. “It’s devotees who are cooking for senior disciples who are really old and not able to cook for themselves. Different devotees do it on a rotating basis in their homes. That food is prepared just with love. There is no other motivation.

Mansi said these meals are prepared exclusively with vegetables grown in the community’s sanctified soil.

“We don’t just get any vegetables from supermarkets. [We cook] simple squashes and beans, just cooked in ghee. Ghee and love,” she says.

As Mansi explained how this secret fourth kitchen works, I thought it sounded a lot like Kumar’s work in the deity kitchen. 

They’re cooking simple, filling meals with wholesome, healthy ingredients — and doing that behind the scenes, without any recognition or praise.

This fourth-kitchen food, cooked in “ghee and love,” isn’t prepared for God. It isn’t cooked within the walls of a temple. But it is prepared for the most vulnerable people in their community. 

The way I see it, you won’t find food much more sacred than that.

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This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, a partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inside Appalachia. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts and culture.