If Indian food is an acquired taste, Shekhar Naik hopes a lot of New Haven-area people have acquired it. In fact, he’s banking on it.
Naik and his wife, Deepa, this past weekend opened the Ambassador of India on Temple Street, the 10th Indian restaurant in downtown New Haven alone.
The New Haven operation is the fourth Ambassador of India since 1995. The others are in Glastonbury, West Hartford and Hartford and have been quite successful.
Naik has some numbers working for him. First, there are many thousands of people who acquired the taste for Indian foods at birth — nearly 28,000 South Asians in New Haven County as of 2006, according to the census. Indians are the fastest growing immigrant population in the state.
Second, there are 27 Indian states, each practically a nation on its own with its own cuisine, plus five other nations whose cuisines are similar to India’s, a phenomenon called desi. It’s hard to get bored with a range of cooking from fiery Tamil Nadu to the more familiar Punjab, and Maharashtra, the state that hosts Mumbai, Naik’s birthplace. He plans to put that fact to good use.
Naik, 53, received a master’s from Bombay Catering College in 1977. (Bombay is now known as Mumbai.) He worked in both Mumbai hotels that were bombed last year. Oberoi Trident and Taj Mahal. He came to the U.S. in 1995 and opened his Glastonbury restaurant the same year.
Naik sat in the Ambassador’s 1,500-square-foot dining room that could seat about 75, a room done in burned orange and muted gold on Temple Street near Chapel, sandwiched between two sandwich shops in what used to be Michael’s Jewelers. He jokingly showed a reporter the safe, which now holds dishes and supplies, but, he hopes, will get back to its original mission of holding money.
There was a quiet intensity and pride about the man as he spoke of his accomplishments and plans, even the deal he made with his two daughters that he would pay for a quality education, but they would owe him a year of work in the family business afterward.
New Haven, he said, is a sophisticated place from which customers traveled to his Greater Hartford locations. He found in them the kind of appetite for what he was offering that led him to risk opening in the Elm City, despite nine competitors in downtown New Haven alone and nearly a half-dozen more in surrounding towns.
His signature dish is chicken tikka masala, which he said is the ubiquitous Indian dish. It is so popular that the former British labor secretary, Robin Cook, said that it, not fish and chips, is the British national dish, an utterance for which Cook was soundly denounced, Naik said. The restaurant will offer both vegetarian and non-vegetarian dishes. (Pictured: Chef Zaffar Khan stirs the sauce.)
Some of his plans, born of the current economic situation, include offering smaller portion sizes as a more affordable alternative to a full-sized and ‑priced entr√©e; and offering 16 or 17 chutneys that customers can taste with naan, the national bread of India, for about $3. In all his restaurants, he moderates spicing to make it more amenable to the American palate.
“Even Indians who have been away from home for a while in cooler climates cannot take” the fiery taste of some dishes, he said with a chuckle.
Some of the other ideas: offer luncheon buffets, take the tables out of one room and play Bollywood music and allow dancing for Indian students and others. He also plans Sunday brunches.
“I’m trying to establish a brand,” he said. He hasn’t pursued franchising, but “if someone is interested, I would consider it.”
Another idea is to offer cuisine of one of the 27 Indian states each month, as well as Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, and Nepalese dishes.
“Each Indian state is like a nation, with its own language and its own food,” he said, and that doesn’t count dialects. “I want my customers to taste a lot of new things.”
The typical dinner for two, with wine, would cost about $50, he said.
Although his wife, Deepa, will be the manager of the New Haven operation, he plans to do a lot of the cooking, along with chef Zaffar Khan. “I will definitely be a chef-owner,” he said. Khan was stirring sauce in the kitchen cramped by two Tandoor ovens as helpers cut up a flock of chickens in other preparation rooms. There will eventually be six employees, including at least one of the daughters.
“We’ll be ready to go,” he said.
The conversation kept coming back to the number of Indian restaurants in the downtown area, including one next door that offers an eclectic menu that includes some Indian and Nepalese dishes.
“It is a lot,” he said, but he feels that his professional approach will allow him to succeed. The mark of a successful Indian restaurant is the number of Indians who eat there. The Census Bureau shows more than 4,000 South Asians living in New Haven two years ago.
Indian food is popular, “especially in an eclectic town like New Haven,” said Bob DeZinno, president and CEO of the Connecticut Restaurant Association, a Waterbury-based industry and lobbying group.
“There may be an oversaturation,” he said, but the market will shake itself out.
Restaurant owners are “special people, fierce competitors,” he said. “Generally, once the restaurant business gets into your blood, you become competitive and aggressive. Each thinks ‘I can do a better job,’” than the competition he said.
Each owner “Is taking his shot at the American dream,” he said.
Ambassador of India, 182 Temple St., New Haven 203 – 848-2290
The restaurant will be open from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. for lunch , and from 5 to 10 p.m. for dinner, seven days a week.
The other Indian restaurants in downtown New Haven include
• Ahimsa 1227 Chapel St.
• India Palace 65 Howe St.
• Marketplace 25 Temple St.
• Royal India 140 Howe St.
• Sitar 45 Grove St.
• Tandoor 1226 Chapel St.
• Thali 4 Orange St.
• Thali II 65 Broadway
• Zaroaka 148 York St.