Spice Waala’s owners have just opened a little cafe in Wallingford, and to understand why I’m so excited about it, you first need to know what’s so great about Spice Waala, which is that it’s one of the last restaurants in Seattle that feels like a deal. You can get a chicken or lamb roll for under $10, or a container of chickpea salad or “Indian nachos” (a.k.a. papdi chaat) for around $5. The spikily spicy green chutney is on nearly everything, as well it should be—the best $4.50 you can spend in town is buying the fries, which are tossed in spices and come with a side of that chutney. 

Achieving Spice Waala’s combination of quality and affordability is harder than it looks. So when the mustached Waala logo appeared on a “coming soon” sign in the window of the former Fuel Coffee on Northeast 45th Street in Wallingford, I was pumped for the new project, even if I had no idea what “Janta” was. 

Janta turns out to be a coffee shop. The word Janta in Hindi means “people,” explains co-owner Uttam Mukherjee. He hopes that it’ll be a gathering space for “different people from different walks of life.” The inspiration is the cafe at St. Stephen’s College in New Delhi, India, where Mukherjee met Aakanksha Sinha, his wife and business partner. 

Janta’s masala egg bun gets a kick from Spice Waala’s signature green chutney.

Courtney of Janta

That emphasis on lingering is a bit of a departure for the Spice Waala couple. Spice Waala’s three locations all have seating, but they’re primarily takeout and delivery places. At Janta, guests are encouraged to hang out. The shelves that used to hold Fuel’s selection of books are stocked with books by South Asian authors that people can borrow while they’re sipping chai or coffee. There’s a kids’ table with crayons and picture books. In the evenings, Mukherjee says, Janta will host pizza nights, author talks, and other community-minded events. It’s larger than any of the Spice Waala restaurants, and Mukherjee hopes to take advantage of that square footage.

“We’re asking people to come in and spend more time in the space,” he says. “If we had the space in Spice Waala, I think we would encourage it there also. But we just don’t have the space in our current locations.”

The connective tissue between Spice Waala and Janta is the food. Many cafes in Seattle have pretty simple food offerings—pastries, some sandwiches in a grab-and-go fridge, maybe a couple of breakfast sandwiches. Thanks to the Spice Waala team’s experience, Janta is able to be more ambitious. There’s a breakfast sandwich with an egg patty livened up by that versatile green chutney. There are puff pastries filled with aloo (spiced potato), a comforting little bite that comes in under $5. The menu also includes toasties (grilled cheese sandwiches) with various fixings, brownies, and even a chickpea flour energy bar made in-house.

For something warm that isn’t coffee, there’s haldi doodh, a traditional Indian drink made with steamed milk, turmeric, and spices.

Courtney of Janta

Its drink offerings are also intriguing. There are espresso drinks made from beans grown in India—a burgeoning industry in the country, Mukherjee says—but Janta isn’t tethered to coffee. There’s chai at the top of the menu, spiced and warming, and turmeric milk, also called golden milk or haldi doodh. For those unfamiliar with that drink, it’s steamed milk mixed with a generous dose of the golden spice that is “activated” by black pepper and other spices. Compared to the milder turmeric lattes some guests might be familiar with, Janta’s version hits you with a medicinal dose of the spice. 

Mukherjee hopes the cafe will become a neighborhood destination for Wallingforders who want a warm beverage and food, but he also wants it to be a beacon to Seattle’s large South Asian community. The cafe is part of a broader trend of coffee shops that are breaking free of the Eurocentric traditions that defined Seattle’s coffee scene for so long. There’s nothing wrong with getting an Italian-inspired espresso drink while munching on a French-inspired pastry, but it can feel a little bit limiting. Janta offers an alternative: Why not have chai and an aloo pastry instead? At $8.50, it’s a deal.