The owner of Taj Indian Cuisine is opening a breakfast and brunch cafe in South Portland this spring to fund his flagship restaurant’s ongoing efforts to provide free meals to anyone in need.
Cobblestone Coffee & Co. is located at 200 Gorham Road, the site where Taj first opened in 2012 before moving to its larger location in 2024. Taj owner Sai Guntaka said he’s been paying rent on the original space for the past two years while he and his family figured out how to put it to use.
“We were first using it as storage, and that was an expensive storage,” he said. “We knew we wanted to do something with it. That’s where we started from. We can’t forget our roots.”
Guntaka said Cobblestone will subsidize Taj’s free meals program. Currently, the restaurant is serving as many as 150 hot meals a day to food-insecure locals, using a warming cabinet set up outside its front entryway. His family now pays for the free meals out of pocket.
“Whatever profit we have after paying expenses (at Cobblestone), every single penny will go to my outreach program,” Guntaka said, adding that the money from Cobblestone could help expand their food outreach efforts.
Cobblestone will serve coffee from Tandem, including a selection of espresso beverages, Indian-flavored coffee and a chai with rose petals popular in the Indian city of Hyderabad, where Guntaka’s family is from.
The food menu will be seasonally driven, with sweet and savory pastries such as cardamom croissants and brunch items like dosa crepes filled with eggs and breakfast meats and the Mumbai street dish vada pav, a potato fritter sandwich. About half the menu will be American-style breakfast dishes “with a twist,” Guntaka said.
Cobblestone’s chef is Adam Williams, who has previously cooked at Evo, Dry Dock and Black Point Inn in Scarborough.
Guntaka said he hopes to open sometime in April. He expects Cobblestone will be open seven days starting at 7 a.m. until 2 or 3 in the afternoon.
This story was originally published by the Maine Trust for Local News. Tim Cebula can be reached at tcebula@pressherald.com.