Uttam Mukherjee and Dr. Aakanksha Sinha have loved to cook their whole lives. Living in America, they missed the food their families made in India. 

In 2018, the couple set out to open a restaurant that brought the foods they grew up with to their new home in Seattle. 

“Looking at the business side and the social impact side, we wanted to find a way to bring those things together,” Sinha said. 

Sinha and Mukherjee co-own Spice Waala, an “unapologetically authentic” Indian street food restaurant in Capitol Hill. They pride themselves on serving complex flavors and dishes that go beyond the curries and naans served at a typical Indian restaurant in America. They started selling food at the South Lake Union Market in 2018 and opened their storefront in April 2019.

Sinha’s career as a professor of social work at Seattle University is what brought the couple to the city in the first place. However, after their success selling their food in the South Lake Union Market, they knew Seattle would be a good place to take Spice Waala further. 

Mukherjee said Indian food in America is often not authentic and based on foods mostly from Northwest India. Their goal with Spice Waala is to introduce Americans to a broad range of food that is often ignored. 

The couple describe India’s street food as is the “common denominator,” where people of all social classes eat the same things.

“We didn’t find the kind of food that we grew up with in Delhi and Calcutta represented here, and especially street food, which is really complex but really affordable,” Mukherjee said. “It’s a really good equalizer for a lot of people.”