When Aakanksha Sinha and Uttam Mukherjee moved to Seattle in 2017, they noticed something missing in the city’s food scene: the kind of Indian street food they grew up with. What started as a casual pop-up at the South Lake Union Farmers Market has grown into Spice Waala, now three locations serving kathi rolls and chaat across Seattle. In this candid conversation, the husband-and-wife team discusses their six-year journey, the challenges of running a restaurant in Seattle’s current climate, and their commitment to making Indian street food accessible while building a sustainable business that gives back to their community.
How did you decide to become food entrepreneurs?
Uttam: We moved to Seattle in 2017 and we had come here from Cincinnati where we did a pop-up over there just to have some fun. But when we came to Seattle we kind of knew that we wanted to take the pop-up a little bit more seriously. My career is in the corporate world, in marketing.
We moved over here because Aakanksha was a professor at Seattle University. We saw what Indian food was available in Seattle, and we just felt like we could offer something very different, very unique. We wanted our future children to be able to experience what we experienced growing up. So we started at the South Lake Union Saturday Market in 2018.
We did that for six months, and then we looked at what was going on to understand whether we wanted to take it further or not. And then we started looking for our first brick and mortar.
You have grown to three locations – and hopefully more!How and why did you choose Capitol Hill as your first location?
Aakanksha: So I don’t think we were very intentional on where we would open – we just wanted to open somewhere! So we started looking at locations with our realtor and I think this one spoke to us and was in the price change that we were looking for, very honestly. So that’s why we opened here.
Does each location offer the same menu, or does it vary by site?
I think we were very lucky that we opened in Capitol Hill because there have been so many different people – income level, diversity in the type of people who are coming in. And I think that really helped stabilize our business during the pandemic, which was the majority of the time that we’ve been functional.
Same menu across all three locations, same price point across all three locations, hopefully same quality across all three locations, because we try to do our quality checks and controls and make sure you get the same thing across all three.
The Columbia City location is slightly different than our Ballard and Capitol Hill locations – it is a takeout window. There is a small patio to wait for your food, so during summer months, that’s perfect. Both Ballard and Capitol Hill both are sit-down places.
Tell us a little bit about the food that you’re serving:
Uttam: So Spice Waala is a combination of Aakanksha and I and where we are from. So we have two types of food on our menu.
We have Kathi rolls, which is kind of like the Indian equivalent of gyros or wraps. And we have four types, a cheese, a potato, a chicken, and a lamb. Kathi rolls are from where I’m from in India, in Calcutta. We wanted to bring that aspect of my childhood, my upbringing to Seattle.
Then there are the snacks, which are collectively called “chaat”, which means “to lick a plate” in the literal translation. That is from Delhi, where Aakanksha is from, and we wanted to bring a slice of where she grew up to Seattle.
We felt like street food specifically was a really good option because there’s a lot of stereotypical Indian food in the U.S. between your curries, your naans, your rice. But we just didn’t grow up eating that on a daily or weekly basis. But street food is something that equalizes everyone.
Everyone can afford to pay a certain price point, get the same quality food at the same service at the same price point. And we just felt like that was something very unique to our values and what we wanted to bring to Seattle.
What are the most popular items on the menu?
- The chicken tikka roll is the most popular item. Everybody loves it, and especially if you add an egg to it, I think that’s the most popular. For vegetarians, paneer roll is the most popular. We make our paneer in-house.
- From the chaat side, our aloo tikki chaat is our signature item and super popular. And the fries also, because we add a spice mix to it.
- With the kids, it’s the mango lassi.
- The samosas!
You’ve used social media to break down exactly why menu prices need to adjust – from ingredient costs to operating expenses. As restaurant owners serving street food, how do you balance the expectation that street food should be affordable with the reality of running a sustainable business in an expensive city?
Uttam: I think the core of our business has always been how do you do a profitable business while doing good to the community. To us, the community means the customers as well as the staff we are employing, and I think the core values combined with the current climate has been very difficult to implement. If we think of the cost of food and the wages going up, we still want to make sure that we are paying people a living wage. We still want to make sure that we are providing the benefits. But the economics of it just doesn’t work if we’re trying to balance the price points, the wages, and then also trying to be a profitable business that needs to survive.
I think the other piece that has been difficult is that we have our Bhojan program, and I think people have forgotten that food insecurity is still an issue. It was popular during the pandemic, and I just saw the rates today – it’s actually increased by 10% since the pandemic. I worry that people are just going to forget that it’s something that we need to be talking about. I think it’s a daily struggle for us trying to balance all of those different pieces.
Unfortunately we are getting hit from both sides in Seattle and I say Seattle specifically because I think a lot of other cities, states, and even within Washington state are not getting hit as much as Seattle is. Firstly, from a top-line revenue standpoint, we’ve had so many changes between legislation or just environmental changes that have just wrecked our business. So last year the pay up went into effect, pay up legislation, the way that DoorDash and Uber Eats etc interpreted that has reduced our revenue on Uber Eats for example by 50% and on DoorDash by 15-20%.
So automatically as a fast casual delivery/takeout focused place, we lost so much revenue last year. The bottom line is getting eroded all the time in Seattle between cost of goods, which is a national problem for sure, but even a small thing that people understand like the cost of eggs has quadrupled in the last month and then we’ve seen that across every single item on our menu for years now.
Our cost of goods has more than doubled in the past four years. So when you establish a business and you establish a business model, everything that you relied on has changed and it’s not because you have that control. I think the minimum wage going up is something that needed to happen in Seattle but it definitely has impacted a lot of restaurants.
The thing that can overcome all of this is if we have more revenue, more people eating out, but there’s a problem in Seattle right now where everything’s just so expensive that people are not going out to eat as much as they were. There’s also a public safety problem, so people are not wanting to go out at night. There are certain neighborhoods which are better than others.
The combination of all these things has just created a really weird dynamic for small business owners and we’re seeing people drop by the wayside. In 2024, there were more restaurants that closed in 2020. I mean that’s something that just surprises everyone, right? And in 2025, we’ve seen probably 20 or 30 closures just in a month.
We’re very cautiously optimistic about what the future holds but we’re hoping that there’s a little bit of a reversal in people going out to eat, especially with the weather turning and those kinds of things, but we’re not seeing the light through the clouds right now.
Why is it important for people to #SpendLikeItMatters?
Aakanksha: I think small businesses are the core of any community because you can have the bigger stores and the bigger businesses that are functioning and are employing a lot of people.
But if you think of immigrant communities, if you think of first generation people like us coming here, if you think of people starting small and collecting a lot of money and then trying to open something new, it is the small businesses that are doing it. So whether it is restaurants, your local bookstore, brewery, etc – just coming out and supporting those businesses is extremely important. It was always, but right now, just based on whatever Uttam said about the numbers, it’s become extremely important to do that.
For us, specifically for Spice Waala, we believe in investing in the community a lot. We do that through our community kitchen program, and the benefits program that we have for our employees. So if you’re looking at places where you should be spending money, finding out the core values of that business is extremely important so that you can know what you’re helping towards.
There’s so much diversity, so much creativity, so much flair, so much spice that comes with your individual, independently owned small businesses. And I think if you relate to them, you have to invest in them also, because they represent who you are. Because those are the owners that said, “I see a need in the community.”
What other small business do you like to support?
- Tai Tung in the International District. Love the people there. Love the food. It’s just so homely. The fact that they’re the oldest Chinese restaurant in Seattle just gives it a different depth of warmth. Please go out and support them.
- We also go to Rachel’s Bagels and Burritos pretty often. I think their bagels are some of the best that I’ve ever had. So, please go out and support them.
- Stateside – we love Stateside. If you’re looking for a good meal for an occasion, please go to Stateside. Their food’s very authentic, and very good.
- If you’re looking to shop local for Asian products, Mekong on Rainier also is great.