Indian-Texan Food Pop-Up 33 Tigers Is Shutting Down

Austin’s oft-morphing Indian-Texan pop-up 33 Tigers is shutting down this month. Its final delivery services, offering naan croissants and dirty chai lattes among other items, will be held on Saturday, September 5, and Sunday, September 6. The pop-up will also continue to serve food at the temporary Asian-centric East Austin market DaijoubuMart through Sunday, September 20.

It was time for a pause for both the co-owners, founder Deepa Shridhar and pastry chef Sakif Khan. “I’m sad, however, I realized I need to take my first break in six years,” writes Shridhar to Eater. At this time, she plans on taking a couple of weeks to recuperate and regroup.

“Even though we were getting great press and had many future plans, we felt burnt out,” explains Shridhar. “First time in six years of running my own business, I realized I needed a break.” Khan also wants to take this time to figure out his future plans.

Shridhar doesn’t plan on staying away forever, though. She’ll come back with some sort of food-related project, whether it’s bringing back her supper club series/food truck Puli-Ra, offering up future spice mixes (33 Tigers is currently offering a moliga salt mixture), or something else.

“We might even work together in the future,” Sridhar says of Khan, “but we definitely want to put 33 Tigers to bed.”

33 Tigers launched earlier this year with a permanent location on East Sixth Street. However, Sridhar had to vacate the space in the spring because of the novel coronavirus pandemic “desvastat[ing] our revenue flows,” since she couldn’t host events.

Before 33 Tigers, Sridhar operated Puli-Ra as a food truck in 2017 and then as a supper club series in 2019. Ahead of that, she ran farmers market stand Chaiwalla in 2016 and her first supper club series Anjore in 2014. She also worked in Texas restaurants including Dallas Italian restaurant Lucia, and Austin restaurants Dai Due and Lenoir.

• 33 Tigers [Instagram]
• 33 Tigers [Official]
• All Coverage of 33 Tigers [EATX]