Shiva Indian Restaurant, a Houston dining fixture since 1990, has permanently closed after 35 years in business. The restaurant, which relocated from its original Rice Village home to Buffalo Speedway in 2022, quietly shut down without a formal farewell, leaving longtime customers to piece together the news after its phone line and online ordering went dark.
According to Chron, the closure was first reported by CultureMap Houston, which noted the restaurant had quietly closed on August 13. Per that same report, Shiva had disconnected its online ordering and phone number, and the restaurant announced its closure on August 21 while expressing gratitude for the community support and patronage it had received over the decades. Chron's John-Henry Perera detailed the restaurant's history as one of the big Indian restaurants that opened inside the Loop in the 1990s.
Shiva first opened its doors in 1990 at 2514 Times Blvd. in Rice Village, where it built a reputation over three decades for an affordable North Indian menu and buffet. The restaurant's regulars reportedly included some unexpected names — the article notes that Shiva once attracted the rock band Aerosmith, as well as former U.S. President George H.W. Bush.
A Family Business With Deep Houston Roots
Ricki Oberoi, who worked at Shiva Indian Restaurant, built a far larger hospitality empire beyond the Rice Village eatery. Oberoi earned a bachelor's degree in Hotel and Restaurant Management in 1986 from the Conrad N. Hilton College at the University of Houston before beginning his hospitality career in Taco Bell management training. He went on to operate more than 50 Wendy's franchises and a dozen Layne's Chicken Fingers locations, per Chron's reporting. Through his franchise management enterprise Oberoi Holdings Inc., he had expanded his Wendy's portfolio to 46 locations across the region as of October 2023, according to Click2Houston. That same report notes his Wendy's franchise organization has helped raise more than $300 million for adoption funds, supporting local community initiatives such as Dave's Wonderful Kids in Houston.
Shiva's ownership history stretches back further still. Court filings in the Texas Fourteenth Court of Appeals, reviewed via Justia Law, show that in August 1999 the restaurant was offered for sale by Mahesh Oberoi for $130,000, structured with a $50,000 down payment and a three-year lease-purchase contract. Separately, per the Chron report citing Savory Traveler, a restaurant manager purchased Shiva Indian Restaurant in 1995.
From Rice Village to Buffalo Speedway
Shiva's exit from Rice Village came with a formal send-off of sorts. The restaurant officially opened its relocated venue at 5220 Buffalo Speedway on January 17, 2022, offering opening-day discounts after vacating its long-standing Times Boulevard space, according to posts on the restaurant's own Facebook page. Its former Rice Village storefront was later occupied by Kasra Persian Grill, which continues to operate at the site as of this month.
Shiva's move and eventual closure mirror a broader pattern playing out across Rice Village, where long-running restaurants have struggled against shifting lease terms. As Community Impact reported, 35-year-old Thai Village closed in May 2025 and 30-year-old Istanbul Grill closed in July, both citing leasing pressures in the same neighborhood.
The End of an Inner-Loop Indian Dining Era
Shiva opened alongside a small cluster of pioneering Indian restaurants that took root inside Houston's Loop in the early 1990s. Khyber North Indian Grill, which opened in 1994 at Richmond and Kirby, became one of the city's other early standard-bearers for the cuisine and later gained local notoriety for a decades-long satirical sign war with a neighboring eatery, as chronicled by CultureMap Houston.
Over the 35 years Shiva operated inside the Loop, Greater Houston's center of gravity for South Asian dining and commerce shifted southwest to the Mahatma Gandhi District along Hillcroft Avenue, which received official designation from the City of Houston in January 2010, according to Texas Highways. That demographic and commercial migration left inner-loop pioneers like Shiva increasingly as outliers rather than the center of the city's Indian dining scene, even as the restaurant held on with loyal regulars for decades. Shiva's quiet exit now closes the book on one of the last original Rice Village-era Indian restaurants that helped define inner-loop dining in the 1990s.
