Our Story

The Colchester Curry House officially began in 2016, but, in my mind, it really began in 2003. That was the year I moved out of Connecticut to take a job in Washington, DC.  It was the first time I was moving out of state and one of the first things that crossed my mind was that I would no longer have my mom’s home cooked meals.  My parents immigrated to the United States in the early 1970s from Kerala, which is in the Southwestern corner of India.  My mom always made us home cooked Southern Indian cuisine for dinner even though she was a fulltime nurse working the night shift at the VA hospital.  I took her wonderful home cooked meals for granted until the moment came when I would not be able to enjoy them on a regular basis anymore.  The reality of my circumstances motivated me to learn how to cook from her.  This entailed not just her cooking techniques, but also how to make a variety of masalas from scratch.  My mom, like many wonderful cooks, cooked with passion and love and not by precisely measuring out the ingredients.  I took this base knowledge of the spices and her best estimates as to the amount of each ingredient and refined the recipes until I got it just right.  The Colchester Curry House is my tribute to my mom, who taught me all I know, and also my way of passing this knowledge and her legacy onto my children.