Indian-Texas Pop-Up Reinvents Itself With a New Name and Location

Indian-Texas dinner club series Supper Club Szn and Puli-Ra, from mastermind chef Deepa Shridhar, changed again. The chef closed both Supper Club and Puli-Ra, and opened a new, now-weekly dinner club series in its places: 33 Tigers, which debuted in January 2020.

With 33 Tigers, Shridhar will offer the same funky fun dining experiences she has been doing under Supper Club Szn, but this time on a weekly basis for 33 guests. During the month of January, these will be held at Govalle urban farm, restaurant, and event space Eden East.

Then there are plans to actually open a permanent location of 33 Tigers right in downtown Austin at 421 East Sixth Street, Suite C. It’s expected to open sometime in February. Until then, though, the dinners will be held at various venues throughout Austin.

33 Tiger’s forever home plans also include a wine bottle shop run by new partner and co-owner Ashtyn Mann. She had been the tasting room manager of Austin Winery. It’ll feature retail bottles of wines, tastings, and a somewhat limited but steady food menu, including, yes, those naan croissants. The wine shop will take over what had been Puli-Ra’s giant food truck.

Shridhar decided to shake things up because she “always felt a bit of wanting,” as she explained to Eater. She wanted to have complete ownership of the dinner clubs. “When you pour everything you got on an experience, it’ll always not quite get the full spectrum unless you can run it all,” she said, while also acknowledging that she has learned a lot from her previous partners. The name is a nod to both Shridhar (the “tiger” portion) and Mann’s lucky number.

The first dinner as 33 Tigers, which was originally sold as Supper Club Szn, is still happened on Sunday, December 1, 2019, held at distillery Still Austin Whiskey Co. in the East Congress neighborhood. The English-Indian themed dinner featured wagyu steak that will be fried in roti dough, ghee-cured prime rib, and sticky toffee brioche rolls. Tickets were $85 for dinner, and $100 with the pre-party full of holiday cookies and drinks.

Shridhar, who had worked at various Texas restaurants like Lucia in Dallas and Dai Due in Austin, first started cooking on her own in Austin under farmers market stand Chaiwalla, where she experimented with Texas-Indian items like samosa pies and paneer queso, as well as supper club series Anjore. She opened Puli-Ra as a full-on food truck in 2017 at, fittingly, Still Austin. It relocated to Texas Keeper Cider later until she decided to shutter it in November 2018 to focus on supper clubs at Austin Winery as of this past summer.

January 7, 2020: This article has been updated to include the location of 33 Tigers’s January supper clubs and the address of 33 Tigers’s future permanent location.

• 33 Tigers [Instagram]
• New Year, New Supper [Official]