It’s a spring afternoon in a strip mall in Echo Park. Jasmine is in bloom. Along Sunset Boulevard, bars are crowded with Dodger fans. A man in a Clayton Kershaw jersey steps out of Leo Market carrying a plastic bag filled with homemade curry, chicken tikka and a pack of American Spirits.
Inside, Kajari Ghatak stands behind the counter, selling creamy curries and biryani. She may be one of the few people in the neighborhood who has little interest in Shohei Ohtani. And yet, her family-owned convenience store has become an unlikely destination for some of the most sought-after Indian food in the area, which might not be known precisely for great Indian food.
“It’s a good neighborhood, and people like us,” she says with a shrug.
At the counter, a smiling woman presents Kajari’s husband, Amit Ghatak, with a winning lottery scratcher. “Sorry, we’re out of money,” he says, with a mischievous wink, before handing over the bills.
The woman lingers, asking about the food. Kajari leans forward, enthusiastically, walking her through each dish, her face lighting up as she speaks.
Moments later, a man wanders into the convenience store from the Super 8 Motel across the street. After a beat, he asks: “You sell Indian food here?”
In the neighborhood, Kajari and her husband are known simply as Mama and Papa. Since 2021, the couple has run the convenience store together, a narrow, fluorescent-lit space whose shelves are stocked with the usual fare — Doritos, condoms, beer, michelada drink mix, scratchers.
In the back, however, Kajari promises a more uncommon offering: home-cooked Indian meals, advertised on a neon-lettered menu designed by one of her regulars.
When her son purchased Leo Market in 2021, Kajari began looking for ways to incorporate her cooking into the business. She started by offering free samples. The praise was immediate.
“All these people, they come in, get the bowl, and eat it,” she says. “They like it.”
On Sundays, she prepares biryani, coconut shrimp and tangy curries, along with vegetarian variations at the request of her regulars. Each dish is cooked in advance, the result of four hours spent in her kitchen.
On days when the Dodgers play, Kajari sells out of her dishes before noon. The effort has earned her a quiet but loyal following, making her a local celebrity. “The whole neighborhood knows me,” she says.
Even at the neighboring sports bar, the Douglas, her food has caused a stir, enticing people between innings to visit Leo Market. Last fall, the bar was the epicenter of Dodger World Series championship festivities.
“If you go to the Douglas, all the people sitting there — they always come to get cigarettes, and my food.”
Kajari and Amit are not exactly Dodger fans. Still, a flat-screen television in the back streams Dodgers games so die-hard fans don’t miss a single pitch or stolen base. Beside it, a neon palm tree buzzes.
Despite working less than a mile from Dodger Stadium during the team’s recent championship runs, Kajari remains largely indifferent. “ I’m Indian,” she says. “I like cricket.”
On a typical Sunday, she serves 16 to 20 meals a day. Sometimes, she says, the smell of warm curry drifting through the store is enough to draw in new customers.
Along a stretch of Sunset Boulevard crowded with trendy lunch options, she believes her food stands apart for its simplicity. She uses a few ingredients, hand-slicing coconuts and pressing them into juice.
Each shrimp is carefully cleaned and then pan-seared with cumin, coriander and masala. She notes that all the flavors work in harmony. “Mine is different from the restaurant,” she says. “It’s not greasy at all.”
Kajari learned to cook in Kolkata, where, after her marriage, her mother-in-law taught her the dishes she still prepares today. “All those things I learned from her,” she says of her trademark flavors.
She cooks by instinct, relying on techniques passed down by her mother-in-law. When she immigrated to the San Fernando Valley in 1999, she brought those recipes with her, carrying forward a tradition shaped by generations of women. Kajari still has a strong connection to India and had planned a trip to visit her 91-year-old mother this year, which was thwarted due to the ongoing war with Iran.
For her signature chicken tikka dish, Kajari marinates the chicken for four hours in yogurt, turmeric, garlic-ginger paste and chile powder. The curry paste’s flavor is attributed to bay leaves and dried red chiles.
Cashew cream is a key ingredient in her chicken tikka. She uses Kashmiri chile for its color and fruity flavor. The marinated chicken is added to the spices with golden-brown fried onion, turmeric powder, cumin powder, salt, cardamom and cinnamon imported from India.
Kajari has experimented with internet-sourced recipes but always returns to recipes that have been passed down from generations in her family, explaining cooking keeps the memory of women in her family alive. “I prefer to keep it our own recipe, our own experience,” she says.
Her cooking has become known beyond Leo Market. At her Hindu temple in the San Fernando Valley, Kajari prepares meals for a community of 200 members who have come to love her food. At home, she speaks Bengali with her family; on Fridays, she wears a sari to work, adorned with traditional jewelry. “I love to wear my Indian jewelry all the time,” she says.
With the help of her son, she hopes to open a restaurant of her own, perhaps in the strip mall that has become her home. She says, “Some people told me: You should open the restaurant.”
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