What’s in a Name? A Conversation with Chitra Agrawal of Brooklyn Delhi
You may be familiar with Brooklyn Delhi, the line of premium, small-batch Indian condiments, sauces, and heat- and heat meals carried by Whole Foods and specialty markets around the country. With its fun label and playful name, the ten-year-old company started out as a passion project of cookbook author and food blogger Chitra Agrawal, and her husband Ben, a designer of food packaging for major U.S. brands.
The daughter of parents from Delhi (dad) and Bangalore (mom) who’d emigrated to the U.S. to pursue advanced degrees, Chitra grew up in New Jersey and went to college on the West Coast. Always interested in food, she— like many American kids—has always enjoyed a variety of ethnic cuisines. But she was particularly drawn to the bright, intense flavors of the Indian dishes her mom and dad cooked at home.
After college, Chitra moved back to New York City to pursue a business degree, which led to a job in marketing at American Express. She found herself living in Brooklyn, a time when the food scene was heating up.
Chitra Agrawal and her husband, Ben Garthus
She created a blog – mainly, she says, “to have a permanent location for family recipes that were everywhere: in emails, texts, scraps of paper, and folders on my desktop.”
With her blog catching on, Chitra began to teach cooking classes throughout the city including at The Brooklyn Kitchen. “At the time Brooklyn was going through a food renaissance of sorts fueled by passionate home cooks. I connected with a community of like-minded people who were blogging, hosting supper clubs,” she recalls, “and I got swept up in it.”
On weekends, she hosted Indian-inspired pop-up dinners in collaboration with local farmers and chefs, sold food at markets and taught cooking classes while she worked her day job in marketing. Soon her work caught the attention of editors at Ten Speed, a division of Penguin Books, who approached her to write a cookbook.
“Vibrant India,” she says, “features recipes very much rooted in in my mom’s style of South Indian cooking but inspired by what I was receiving in my farm share in Brooklyn. At the time, Ben and I were just getting together. And quite logically, with his experience in food packaging, he said, ‘How about we start a food brand together?'”
Until then, Chitra saw herself as a marketer. A cook. An author. A teacher. But she’d never envisioned herself as owner and manufacturer of food products. Looking back, however, she sees Brooklyn Delhi as the result of natural progression: a way of exploring her Indian and American identity through the lens of food. “Even the name we came up with encapsulated that idea.”
Chitra and Ben started small – producing and packaging two achaars, traditional Indian condiments that Chitra made in small batches by hand at a Brooklyn soup pantry, then demoing and selling it on weekends “at markets, fairs, and any place that would take me.”
Achaars are sometimes called Indian pickle – a descriptor that doesn’t begin to describe their vibrancy and depth – and less known to Americans than chutneys. Chitra found that when she offered tastes, people realized they could use it with all kinds of dishes: burgers, vegetables, mixed with mayo or yogurt as dips and dressings – not only “strictly” in Indian dishes.”
In a serendipitous development, one of Chitra’s colleagues at The Brooklyn Kitchen moved into a culinary position at Blue Apron. “She knew my achaars and loved them. She said, ‘We need to put one in a box!”
Chitra and Ben realized this was a great opportunity – a way to introduce their achaars to many more people than they could reach at markets and fairs ” Blue Apron was really the solution we needed, and they became terrific partners: innovative in pairing our specially-packaged achaars into non-traditional meal kits” Soon Blue Apron called on Chitra to develop a Mango Chutney and Korma that Brooklyn Delhi eventually launched as retail products sold at grocery stores like Whole Foods.
“Before long, Whole Foods was not only carrying our products but also coming to us with ideas. Working with them, we developed a line of plant-based simmer sauces. More recently, they suggested we produce full, ready to eat meals—which we just launched. These include fusion offerings like our black beans butter masala as well as more traditional flavors like or red bean rajma masala,” she says. “Our next focus is to get the word out.
Chitra and Ben feel lucky to have innovative partners like Blue Apron and Whole Foods, that are both appreciative of the quality and on board with the vision. With products now on supermarket shelves around the country, the demands of volume and distribution have made one-woman runs at the Brooklyn soup kitchen a memory. For the past five years, the couple has worked with small, carefully chosen co-manufacturing facilities where either Chitra or Ben is on site, overseeing every single ingredient and run.
“We know there are other ways to grow a company bigger and faster,” she says, referring to raising capital “But we have decided – for now anyway – not to take on investors, instead growing the company according to our vision: paying homage to our roots while maintaining cultural integrity in every product we create.”
To that end, in 2021 Chitra and Ben moved, with their two young sons, now five and seven, from Brooklyn to the Hudson Valley, where it’s an easy drive to their co-manufacturing facility.
They’re also enjoying the less frenetic pace of life. Even if the business still takes up “150% of our time,” Chitra says. “We wake up to nature and find more time for walks, cooking, and spending time with the boys.” Cooking, Chitra says, provides a way for her and Ben to unwind. The meals they prepare at home span a variety of cuisines (especially Italian, since she grew in Jersey). But Chitra is quick to note that Ben, who is not Indian, routinely produces Indian dishes that win the approval of her mom.
Ten years ago, Chitra says, she may not have envisioned where life has taken her. But looking back, she realizes that each of her choices put her on the road to success.
“At Berkeley I studied psychology and English,” she says. “Then came business school and the years in marketing for American Express. When I found my passion, I was able to use all these different skills and experiences. I may not be the world’s greatest numbers person. But I can get into a spread sheet. I understand marketing. And as much as I love food, I enjoy the `business’ side of things, too. “
The market, she acknowledges, is competitive, fairly teeming with chutneys, simmer sauces and even ready-to-heat meals. “But we’re the only brand selling small batch, premium flavors including traditional Indian condiments,” she says. This adds an authentic depth and complexity to her offerings and is central to her longstanding mission—which goes back to her teaching cooking classes—of education.
“I want people to discover the flavors that I so loved when I was growing up,” she says. “By making the authentic flavors of Indian cuisine accessible to more people, Brooklyn Delhi is elevating the conversation—and the experience—at grocery stores and ultimately around dining tables across America.
All photos courtesy of Chitra Agrawal
For more information, go to the website https://brooklyndelhi.com/and on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brooklyndelhi