photograph by anna traverse
If you walk past India Palace on a clear day, a waft of spices might tickle your nose; inside the dining room, you breathe in the redolence of turmeric, ginger, chili, and much more you can’t discern. But a visit to the kitchen is something else entirely, a new level of delight unlocked for someone, such as me, who has loved this family restaurant for all of its 28 years (and counting).
Masala sauce simmers in a timpani-sized pot, ready to blanket chickpeas or chicken; an array of sauté pans hold the palak paneer, daal, and bhindi masala that have held me together on good evenings and bad. Standing squarely in the kitchen he runs is head chef Jas Singh, who has been cooking in this room since the restaurant opened in 1996. I feel like I’m being invited into an almost-holy space: the kitchen of India Palace, can you believe?
The Kumar family, who founded India Palace and are still owners, come from the Punjab region of Northern India, and the food they serve here reflects that heritage; the recipes are family recipes from the Kumar family and the other cooks. Binder Kumar is the face of the restaurant, but his brother is a cook here, and Binder’s adult son, Brijesh, works at India Palace now too. Brijesh and his brother grew up in this kitchen and dining room, and today, Brijesh works proudly alongside his father and uncle. “I tried my hardest to go do something else,” Brijesh says, over tea he and his father insist on pouring, “but it pulled me back in.”
The day begins early for the cooks, around 8:30, when they arrive to begin preparing dishes for the day’s lunch buffet, which opens at 11. They close for a few hours in the afternoons to prepare the kitchen for dinner, available until 9:30. A very long day, but one redolent with meaning: This is a soul-food restaurant, just a different sort of soul food. Brijesh says of his father, “He’s very genuine in taking care of the customers. He treats it very sacredly.”
That care is returned from long-time customers who keep visiting India Palace year upon year, Binder says. “They were sitting in the highchairs; now they’re grown up, they bring their kids.”
Back in the kitchen, Binder stands for a photo with the cooks, who are also family. They try to send me home with food, with mango lassi, with more tea: love, with a side of spices.
