Cheetie Kumar Transcript
Kerry Diamond:
Hi, everyone. You are listening to Radio Cherry Bombe, and I'm your host, Kerry Diamond, coming to you from Cherry Bombe HQ in Manhattan. Today's guest is Cheetie Kumar, self-taught chef, rock and roller, and restaurant industry champion. To know Cheetie is to love her, as you're about to find out. She and her husband Paul are the owners of Ajja, a restaurant in Raleigh, North Carolina, that celebrates the bold, beautiful flavors she loves. Ajja means “come over” in Hindi and Urdu, as Cheetie explains, and it's the perfect word to describe their buzzy neighborhood spot. Cheetie is also vice president and a board member of the Independent Restaurant Coalition, which represents indie operators across the country. Cheetie and the IRC are fighting to keep restaurants around the country alive and thriving. Yes, a cause we can all get behind. Tune in to learn about her childhood in the Bronx, how life on the road with Cheetie's band led to her becoming a chef, and what she means by the stupidity of ambition. Our chat was recorded during my visit to Raleigh. Great food town. Stay tuned for Cheetie Kumar.
Next up on our summer Tastemaker tour, presented by the Visa Dining Collection by OpenTable and Visa, is Austin, Texas. We're headed to the gorgeous Commodore Perry Estate on Friday, June 27th, for an afternoon of great food, connection, and conversation. We'll be joined by special guests Sarah Heard, Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel, Amanda Turner, and Ale Kuri, some of the most exciting culinary talents in Texas right now. As always, there'll be delicious bites, a panel chat, and plenty of time to connect with fellow Bombesquad members. Access is available for those with eligible Visa credit cards. Terms and conditions apply. Visit cherrybombe.com for tickets and to learn more. We'd love to see you this summer in Austin.
Now let's check in with today's guest. Cheetie Kumar, welcome to Radio Cherry Bombe.
Cheetie Kumar:
So glad to be here.
Kerry Diamond:
I was so excited to be able to eat at Ajja last night. Thank you for being open on Sundays.
Cheetie Kumar:
Yeah, it's one of the things that I begrudgingly knew we had to do. It's in a neighborhood, and there's nowhere to eat on Sundays.
Kerry Diamond:
Learned a lot about you because we hung out last night at the counter. I had absolutely no idea you were a native New Yorker.
Cheetie Kumar:
Well, yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
You are so associated with the South and North Carolina. You've lost a bit of your -
Cheetie Kumar:
Oh yeah. Well, it's been a long time.
Kerry Diamond:
... your New York accent over the years.
Cheetie Kumar:
As soon as I get in the back of a cab though, it comes right back.
Kerry Diamond:
It comes right back. That's good to know. But one thing I don't know about you is how you became a chef.
Cheetie Kumar:
Well, a long, meandering process. I learned to cook when I was a kid. I was always into food and we lived in India until I was eight and a half and I was always in the kitchen. It's cliche, my grandma lived with us, and I would just gravitate towards the kitchen, getting treats and whatnot, and burning my hands at a very young age. We moved to America, my mom started working, and we lived in a very small apartment. So yeah, I wasn't really allowed to go anywhere. We lived in the Bronx, and it wasn't very safe. We lived in a busy street and it wasn't really anywhere you could go play.
Kerry Diamond:
Why did your parents come here? Do you know?
Cheetie Kumar:
For work. They were both scientists and they lived here in the '60s. Indians weren't really allowed to be residents of the country until 1965, so they were here as part of the first wave and they had temporary visas and they were both research biochemists. My dad was very ambitious, but my mom had a lot of internal conflicts about staying in America. I think she felt like she was abandoning her family and her roots, so they decided to not renew their visa. She got pregnant with me. They moved back, and I think the reality dawned on my dad, especially, was very frustrated, so he was always looking for a job. The whole time we were growing up, we were like, "We're moving back to America." And so finally he got a job and it wasn't a great job, but it was a job. It was a foothold.
Kerry Diamond:
Eight is a tough age. Just moved to a new school, let alone a brand new country. Do you remember anything of it?
Cheetie Kumar:
I remember everything.
Kerry Diamond:
You do?
Cheetie Kumar:
Yeah. I have a lot of memories of my childhood and that time and-
Kerry Diamond:
Were you excited moving, or?
Cheetie Kumar:
I was really excited moving. I was not excited once we got here. You picture things and the fantasy was just such a big part of my childhood, the fantasy of America and the clean streets and the gleaming glass dishes of spaghetti and meatballs and all of the ads that I'd seen, and we moved to the Bron,x and it was not that. I was used to being well-adjusted and a kid with friends, and my dad was well-connected. He was just one of those guys. Even though we weren't rich at all, we lived in a house that was part of the university housing or whatever, but we had a pretty relatively-
Kerry Diamond:
You were comfortable.
Cheetie Kumar:
We were comfortable. Yeah, we were comfortable. We were not comfortable when we moved to America. There's three years of uncertainty of are we going to get a green card. We might have to go back. There was no money. We lived in a two-bedroom apartment, three kids, and language barriers and accents and just it's at an awkward age. Anyway, but I've made a lot of friends. I've met people throughout my life and so many people that I connect with. It turns out they've moved at eight and we have this interesting... I don't know, there's a thing, it's like it's not astrological. You moved at eight, didn't you? You grow up pretty fast. At that age, you know what's going on. You can tell your parents aren't in a good place and so you become very self-sufficient. I think that's part of our generation anyway.
We're kind of that way. Anyway, my mom taught me to do some stuff in the kitchen, so I'd get dinner started, but my sister was very like, "I'm definitely going to be a doctor." My family's Indian and that generation of immigrants who are like our parents were very like, get a degree, stability, security, very important. And I just never really had a calling for something that I thought would be a viable career. I studied psychology at UMass, but really I was obsessed with music and that was my go-to career right out of college, managing bands. I started my own company, very young, got my band signed and then they all broke up, and then I had no company anymore.
Kerry Diamond:
Wait, go back a little. So you must've been running around the city checking out bands because-
Cheetie Kumar:
Well, I mean-
Kerry Diamond:
... Manhattan was in your backyard and everybody-
Cheetie Kumar:
Yeah, but I wasn't really... Yeah, I wasn't allowed to do that in high school.
Kerry Diamond:
You were a good kid.
Cheetie Kumar:
I snuck out for sure, but it's not like at 15 I wasn't going to the clubs. I wasn't that daring. I had to be home at a certain time, so I did what I could during those hours, so I spent a lot of time in the city.
Kerry Diamond:
So you get to college, that must've represented a lot of freedom for you.
Cheetie Kumar:
It did. It really did. I could not wait and it couldn't happen soon enough. So I really worked at the radio station and the concert board, and we used to go to Boston and New York to see shows. Amherst had Dinosaur Jr. and the Pixies would always play and there was a lot going on and at that time there were all these bands in the South, everything from hardcore to Jangle pop, and I just had this weird draw to it and visited North Carolina, and I just really loved it here. After my bands broke up, I decided to learn how to play guitar, and then we did that.
Kerry Diamond:
That's kind of late to learn how to play guitar.
Cheetie Kumar:
Yeah, it was.
Kerry Diamond:
The whole time. Did you think you wanted to be in bands?
Cheetie Kumar:
I didn't dare. I mean, I had a guitar. Yes-
Kerry Diamond:
Even in college?
Cheetie Kumar:
Even in college, no, this guy that I was friends with had this Jackson Flying V copy, and I borrowed it. And I mean, I had learned some chords when I was a kid on an acoustic, but I love Led Zeppelin and the Ramones. I don't want to play Joni Mitchell songs. I love Joni Mitchell now, but I didn't then, but my parents were not going to get me an electric guitar. But it was such a part of my internal fantasy life. I didn't dare think that, but that's the thing about the '90s, it wasn't even cool to be proficient, so it was just, I learned a bunch of Stooges songs and MC5 and I was trying to be as good as I could, but we just said, "Screw it." We bought a van at the state auction lot, a former prison van, and booked a tour and went on tour and I learned how to play on tour-
Kerry Diamond:
What was the name of your band?
Cheetie Kumar:
The Cherry Valance, named after the character in “The Outsiders,” and I was the only girl and-
Kerry Diamond:
Diane Lane, right?
Cheetie Kumar:
Diane Lane, yes.
Kerry Diamond:
Were you the lead singer also?
Cheetie Kumar:
No, I didn't sing. I just played guitar. I was too shy to sing. Maybe still am.
Kerry Diamond:
Did you write songs?
Cheetie Kumar:
We wrote collectively, yeah. I was really into guitar and effects and tone and recording. I just really loved studio stuff and I managed the band and took care of the money and all of the things that go along with it.
Kerry Diamond:
We'll be right back with today's guest. Today's episode is presented by Vivienne Culinary Books in Portland, Oregon, located in the Alberta Arts District of the city. Vivienne Culinary Books is owned by the creative and curious Robin Wheelwright, and it is truly a one-of-a-kind place. The shop features a curated mix of new and vintage titles. Everything from the latest must-reads to rare gems, but it's not just books. Robin also carries table linens, aprons, pantry items from local makers, bottles of good wine, and unique consigned kitchen wares. Depending on the day, you might find some vintage copper pieces or that Le Creuset you've been hunting for. I know this because every time I've been to Vivienne Culinary Books, I leave with some unique cookbooks and items for my kitchen I can't find anywhere else. The best part, Robin is building community in the most delicious way possible, hosting dinner party-style cooking classes at Vivienne and welcoming authors on their cookbook tours. If you're in Portland, go visit, and if you're traveling to Portland this summer, put Vivienne on your list of places to stop by. Tell Robin that Cherry Bombe sent you. Otherwise, browse online at viviennepdx.com and follow along on Instagram at Vivienne Culinary Books.
How were you feeding yourself at the time?
Cheetie Kumar:
Well-
Kerry Diamond:
Were you cooking elaborate things?
Cheetie Kumar:
I would cook on tour. To support being in a band, I was working in a restaurant. So I started in the kitchen and I was like, well, I can't do both because neither of those things are going to make me money. So I started bartending and for some reason they let me keep my shifts when I came home on the weekends, but I would cater a little bit on the side and when we were on tour, I'd be dying to cook and when I was home cooking and working in a restaurant I'd be dying to go back out on tour. But we had a bin under our... I built the bench and upholstered the bench in our van. We had no seat belts and underneath we had bins, like skinny versions of that, and they were filled with spices and oil and vinegar and everything we'd need. So we'd go to supermarkets and we camped as much as we could.
Kerry Diamond:
So you had a hot plate, things like that?
Cheetie Kumar:
Oh yeah. I made good meals on George Foreman grills and a hot plate in Motel 6s, or more often than not, we were crashing with people. So I'd always scope out, it was always good if we stayed with somebody who there was a female in the vicinity. The kitchen was usable and yeah, I mean it was a zen exercise in starvation and being resourceful. Every meal was like a Chopped episode.
Kerry Diamond:
Your bandmates must have loved you.
Cheetie Kumar:
They didn't admit it, but yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
I mean a lot of the stories of bands touring is just hunger, food from gas stations, and lots of fighting.
Cheetie Kumar:
Yes. Yeah. I mean you get cranky, but I really tried, I read “Fast Food Nation,” so I was like, "Well, I can't eat fast food." The most I would let myself do is get a salad at Subway, no dressing, and then use all those vegetables to make real meals and I'd make lentils and-
Kerry Diamond:
That's clever.
Cheetie Kumar:
Yeah, I would do fish on a fire and all kinds of stuff. Loved canned oysters. We'd have girl dinner before they knew what girl dinner was.
Kerry Diamond:
Not your typical band food.
Cheetie Kumar:
No, no. And when other bands toured with us, it was like, I guess I'm cooking for 15 people now. 15 dudes who are just like, "Duh, I don't... Oh wow. Cool. Thanks."
Kerry Diamond:
So what happened to Cherry Valance?
Cheetie Kumar:
Paul and I left The Cherry Valance. It just wasn't-
Kerry Diamond:
So it was The Cherry Valance?
Cheetie Kumar:
It was The Cherry Valance-
Kerry Diamond:
Got it.
Cheetie Kumar:
Yeah. We were doing great. We toured in Spain and France, and we toured Americ,a and I don't know, I just felt like-
Kerry Diamond:
Did you put out albums?
Cheetie Kumar:
We did. We put out two records and an EP. Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Are you on Spotify?
Cheetie Kumar:
We probably are. I think we were on YouTube, but Paul and I left. We wanted to do things that were a little bit more arty and Cherry Valance was very rock and roll, brash, and so we formed Birds of Avalon at that point. And Birds of Avalon is definitely on Spotify.
Kerry Diamond:
So everybody, whatever you're on, Spotify, YouTube Music, Apple Music, Birds of Avalon.
Cheetie Kumar:
And Birds of Avalon, the later stuff is my favorite. Our last record was in 2017. Well, how time flies. Anyway, so this is a-
Kerry Diamond:
It's okay, my last cookbook was 2017. It was a good year for culture.
Cheetie Kumar:
It was, yeah. So apparently there's an astrological come around with this year with 2017. I just was listening to Chani Nicholas.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay. Do you get a check from Spotify?
Cheetie Kumar:
We get BMI checks-
Kerry Diamond:
BMI checks.
Cheetie Kumar:
Spotify, all digital streaming royalties go through Sound Exchange, I think it is. Those royalties are hilariously small. But-
Kerry Diamond:
But you do get a check every-
Cheetie Kumar:
Yeah, every quarter we get a BMI check. It's nice.
Kerry Diamond:
All right folks, go listen to Birds of Avalon, and let's try to get Cheetie's checks to pop a little bit.
Cheetie Kumar:
Yeah, if only we were on a TV soundtrack, that'd be real money.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, so you were a mixologist professionally more than a chef professionally?
Cheetie Kumar:
Yes, and I would say I was a bartender. I could work a four-deep bar for 10 hours, but I wasn't... I mean I was creating-
Kerry Diamond:
No one was calling you a mixologist?
Cheetie Kumar:
No, I squeezed fruit for every drink. I never really took shortcuts, but I wasn't working in that kind of environment. I was more really interested in food. I read cookbooks on tour, like novels. I was just obsessed with food.
Kerry Diamond:
What were you reading?
Cheetie Kumar:
Deborah Madison, Jacques Pépin, Julia Child, Madhur Jaffrey, of course, whatever. We'd go to used bookstores and I'd always buy a couple of Kurt Vonnegut books and go to the cookbook section and get whatever. Everybody that had a cookbook, I would just learn techniques.
Kerry Diamond:
From reading, it's so interesting because now we all watch cookbooks to learn.
Cheetie Kumar:
Yeah, and I do too. I don't read cookbooks like I used to, but I would always just try to... Okay, well in India you start, this is basically our mirepoix, and this mirepoix. So I was kind of forming diagrams in my mind of commonalities and seeing through lines and just learning about different people. And how we're kind of the same.
Kerry Diamond:
Was your mom a good cook?
Cheetie Kumar:
My mom was a phenomenal cook.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh wow.
Cheetie Kumar:
Food was really the language of her soul. I know that sounds hokey, but she was very intuitive and she had never measured anything. It was classic brown mom. But she was a really great cook and I studied how her food evolved and she was also really open to new things, very harsh critic at restaurants. Both my parents were great cooks. Everybody in the family is a great cook. We're the kind of family who plans dinner at lunch and breakfast at dinner, that sort of thing. It was like our saving grace when we moved to America. It was the only joy. Mom's making keema tonight or we're having rajma chawal or something. That was our glow in the day.
Kerry Diamond:
How did they feel about your music career?
Cheetie Kumar:
Oh, I'm sure that they were very worried, but I was on my own and I don't know why, but they just let me figure it out. I was a middle child and again, very self-sufficient, and so they put their focus on my siblings and I somehow maybe either made them feel like I was going to be okay, or they thought let's just give her some time. I also didn't really share how hard it was with them. I remember calling my mom from a payphone in Pensacola on my first tour and I was like, "I just really want to do this for a little while." I was very emotional and she was really cool. She just suspended her worry and my dad went along with whatever she said, so it was okay. So Paul, my husband, while we were on tour, opened a music venue with a couple of friends because there were three people.
Those three guys were all in different bands. And when people, our friends that we met on tour would come to town, there's nowhere cool for them to play. So sometimes we'd put them in a house party or a practice space show or whatever, and it was just so frustrating and we just felt like there's so much music happening here. Chapel Hill has the Cat's Cradle, we've got nothing. So they opened a music venue that ended up being a really important part of the scene and all kinds of people came through. The Shins played there, and Aaron Jones and Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell, Pere Ubu, so many bands came through. It was amazing.
Kerry Diamond:
And what was the name of it again?
Cheetie Kumar:
Kings, and Kings is still there. That building downtown, when downtown really had nothing. There were no real restaurants or anything going on, but that got torn down, built the convention center, and we were looking for a new space and at that point, I wanted do something with food in that space, whatever space we found. And we found a second-generation space that ended up being massive. It was 10,000 square feet, venue upstairs, restaurant in the middle, and bar downstairs. And just the stupidity of ambition, just like, yeah, we can do this-
Kerry Diamond:
I'm going to use that term.
Cheetie Kumar:
So I ended up with a restaurant, and the lease and the space was there and it was way bigger. I wanted to have a permanent food truck with five items on the menu.
Kerry Diamond:
So, just going back a little bit, were you two done with touring? You wanted to have something permanent?
Cheetie Kumar:
I mean, I think we were kind of getting tired of touring and music. The way things happen in the music business changed too. Everything was digital and in the aughts, you made a record and you toured to support the record. The tour was a commercial for the record, and the record was a commercial for your tour and all that. And then at some point, it felt very sudden it didn't matter if you toured and your record didn't matter if it was good, it was like it either caught online or it didn't. And you couldn't really support yourself by touring and being-
Kerry Diamond:
The way you once could.
Cheetie Kumar:
Yeah. And it wasn't like, oh, that band was great, I'm going to go see them again. It just didn't matter. People just didn't go out in the same way.
Kerry Diamond:
How extensively did you all tour? Did you tour around the world?
Cheetie Kumar:
We toured all of North America, Canada, and Western Europe, but we didn't ever get to go to Japan or anything like that. We spent a lot of time in Spain and Belgium and France and Holland and Germany, Sweden, Norway. Yeah, we-
Kerry Diamond:
That's amazing.
Cheetie Kumar:
It really was. At the time, I was like, "We're not successful. We're still stuck in this spot." But now I look back and it was so incredible for us to be able to do that. And even though we were only in those cities for one night at a time, really got a sense of culture. It's like a Polaroid. We got a series of Polaroids of each town, and I could tell Des Moines has not much going on, but there's that one pizza place that does weird stuff. I'm like, there's somebody cool there. Or this is how people in Bilbao eat. And the culture is very palpable. If you're walking into a place and you know only have two hours, it's like the best limitation. Go. And you're walking, right? The van is parked. You can't move it. So here you are in whatever part of town and you get a very thorough sense because. You're wide open. What else are you going to do? That's your only time to explore in the day. I've been sitting for six hours in a vehicle.
Kerry Diamond:
There's one thing we didn't point out is there were not a lot of women in bands even back then.
Cheetie Kumar:
No, not at all. I mean, especially playing guitar. Bass guitar, yes, but not guitar guitar. Not lead guitar and not not singing. It's like, I can't tell you how many times they'd be like, "Oh, are you the T-shirt girl?" The daily nightly thing with the sound guy. "Oh, lead guitar," and they'd point to Paul and it's like, "Screw you, buddy." But I'm glad that that's not really the case anymore. It's a lot more-
Kerry Diamond:
It's amazing. It's amazing now. I can't even believe it and I think back to some of the bands I loved back in the eighties and the nineties, and yes, there were bands like The Bangles and The Go-Go's and Siouxsie and the Banshees and Kim Deal. Thank God for Kim Deal.
Cheetie Kumar:
And Kelley Deal.
Kerry Diamond:
And Kelley Deal, right, right. And Kelly. But it is not like today.
Cheetie Kumar:
No, no, I love that there's no hesitation. Why wouldn't a girl play guitar?
Kerry Diamond:
Even pop music right now, I was never a huge fan of pop music and I love all these performers.
Cheetie Kumar:
I know there's so much... There's good stuff.
Kerry Diamond:
I mean, can you even call Beyoncé and Taylor and all those folks pop music anymore? It's just, what do these labels even mean today?
Cheetie Kumar:
Right. I guess it's very highly produced. So that's kind of what I consider pop music and it's popular, certainly.
Kerry Diamond:
It is popular.
Cheetie Kumar:
But it's creative. It doesn't feel very cookie-cutter. It doesn't feel like some guy was like, "Here's what we're going to do. We're going to make you a star." It was quite a different time and very DIY. DIY is a really big part of the aesthetic and a big part of who I am.
Kerry Diamond:
You've really persevered. Oh my gosh. All the different chapters of your life. It's amazing.
Cheetie Kumar:
You just put one foot in front of the other. There's a lot of turmoil.
Kerry Diamond:
And you and Paul, you've been together a long time.
Cheetie Kumar:
Very long time. And we've seen a lot together and it's astounding sometimes. I think we still choose to be together. After a while, you have to really make that decision periodically more often than not, I think, and keep working on stuff. But I'm lucky we found each other and he's so positive and he had such a quiet and peaceful childhood and I did not. I think he brought out so much in me and I'm very grateful for that. I don't think I would've played guitar in that way if it wasn't for him. He was just like, "You're good. You should do it."
Kerry Diamond:
Really sweet. You definitely seem like two sides of a coin.
Cheetie Kumar:
Yeah. Yeah. I think it works in that regard for sure. He's the optimist, infuriatingly so and I'm the infuriating pessimist and somewhere in there, we filled the glass.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay. So he opens-
Cheetie Kumar:
He opens Kings in the first iteration five, seven years.
Kerry Diamond:
King 1.0.
Cheetie Kumar:
Kings the first. Yeah. We looked for a new space and we found the spot on Martin Street, and that's when Garland happened. At first-
Kerry Diamond:
Had you wanted a restaurant?
Cheetie Kumar:
I wanted a very small restaurant. I knew I didn't know how to do that. Like a 3000 square foot restaurant with a service team and a bar and 85 seats and a full kitchen. I liked too many things and I didn't really... Thank God our lease was pretty cheap when we started, because I just threw things against the wall. I mean-
Kerry Diamond:
You literally threw the spaghetti at the wall?
Cheetie Kumar:
I literally did. It was duck bogey. But I was very determined to not have an Indian restaurant. There were things I knew I didn't want to do. I knew I didn't want to source from a big box truck. I knew that the thing that I loved about Raleigh was the farmer's market. I knew that there were not any restaurants that were... There was a great divide, like Euro-based food that was expensive and well done and a great experience and then there's a lot of ethnic diversity in this area. But all of those places were "cheap eats", and the service wasn't that great, but the food could be, but it's not the same. You wouldn't consider having the same kind of meal and those two experiences were very different. And I really felt like that gap needed to be bridged in Raleigh. So here we are.
I mean, I do have bartending experience. I was a server for about six months, world's worst server, but I knew how to cook, but I didn't call myself a chef for the first four or five years. I was just like, people would say, chef. And I'm like, "I'm not a chef." I did not feel like I earned that title. I was really just flying by the seat of my pants and just working like a dog. I know there's people who are starting and you know what that's like, it's 80, 90 hours first in, last out, no breaks. On my days off, I'd do the orders and inventory and all of that stuff. No sleep, terror, and slow. We were so slow. I mean, my God.
Kerry Diamond:
So I had no idea you weren't a classically trained chef.
Cheetie Kumar:
No, no.
Kerry Diamond:
I knew the music stuff. I don't know. I just assumed that you followed a traditional path.
Cheetie Kumar:
I should have just taken guitar lessons and gone to cooking school. My life would've been so much better. But what if. I don't know. I think sometimes I can see-
Kerry Diamond:
Some of us do things the hard way.
Cheetie Kumar:
Yeah. I don't get a badge for doing that. It's so dumb. Now I get out in the world and I cook all over the place and I see chefs and I can immediately tell there is a beauty for self-taught and self-taught people but there's a refinement and a straight-to-the-point clarity.
Kerry Diamond:
But at the same time, I was at Ajja last night, and when I looked at the menu, I was like, "I literally want everything on the menu." And that's not something I experience at every restaurant.
Cheetie Kumar:
Well, that's very kind.
Kerry Diamond:
So you've tapped into something. It does not look like a menu that was built pleasingly without pandering.
Cheetie Kumar:
Right. And that is really one of the things that I held onto when we opened Garland. It was like, we're never going to have butter chicken on the menu. We're never going to have all of the things that you'd expect. It's just all really going to be about this is delicious and I hate borders. It has a lot to do with my family history. I think most of the modern borders are done by colonial powers. I just think all of those barriers are very artificial and it doesn't really tell the true story of food. I'm doing a Middle Eastern restaurant. I'm not Middle Eastern, but I have an affinity for that history. And my family's history has been touched by all of that. So it's a fun exploration. And also, I'm just having a great time learning about it and learning how to pronounce Arabic words, and I think it's pretty fun.
Kerry Diamond:
Well, I think you come at it respectfully.
Cheetie Kumar:
Absolutely.
Kerry Diamond:
Yeah. So you have Garland. How long was the run at Garland?
Cheetie Kumar:
Garland opened in December of 2013, and we closed it in the end of August 2022. So nine years a good run, really good run. And it was tied in a building with a music venue and a basement bar. If there was one place that you couldn't go you really couldn't go to restaurants, but you really couldn't go to a music venue with no open windows and you definitely couldn't go to a tiny basement bar.
So it was also, I think a lot of people took that time to reevaluate and see what they wanted in their life. And after my mom died in 2016, I just felt like everything was up in the air and I really wanted to pick and choose what belonged to my life. There wasn't any room for anything. It was like, well, the venue has to not be in my life. And Paul, I think liked it more than I did, but really it was just such an albatross all the time. And it's hard to make money in a 250-person venue. It was just really tied to that whole thing and I think I was just looking for a new itch to scratch and-
Kerry Diamond:
Did you know you wanted to stay in restaurants?
Cheetie Kumar:
It just kind of worked out that way. We got the building that Ajja is in. I probably would've gotten out if we hadn't ended up with that building. Those two weren't connected, but it ended up being one after the other. It was supposed to be simultaneous, but that's just not how it worked out. So I was really open. I really tried to open myself up in 2021 when I was trying to make that decision. It rolled out. So I trusted in the process, and I don't know.
Kerry Diamond:
And you and Paul actually bought the building.
Cheetie Kumar:
We did.
Kerry Diamond:
Which is remarkable.
Cheetie Kumar:
It is.
Kerry Diamond:
Congratulations.
Cheetie Kumar:
Thank you. I mean, the SBA helped us, and a great local bank.
Kerry Diamond:
Thanks, SBA.
Cheetie Kumar:
Yeah, we're very much in debt. But it was another pandemic lesson because we were looking at losing everything and after working that hard for 10 years and facing the possibility of having zero, less than zero, it was just like, well, here's a different way to... There's got to be a better way.
Kerry Diamond:
So 2013, you opened, that was very much a boom time for Southern food. You had the rise of the Southern Foodways Alliance, you had all these chefs down South finally being for what they were doing and where they were sourcing. You had all this incredible female chef talent in North Carolina. Were you so buried that you didn't have time to participate in this movement, so to speak, or were you able to be part of that community in a bigger sense?
Cheetie Kumar:
Not right away. I mean, I was obviously very inspired and influenced by Ashley Christensen, and I didn't really know Katie for a while, but Andrea Reusing, I mean, those women were... Ashley and I were friends before, but as chefs, they were terrifying to me, and I just couldn't understand how confident they were. And they just seemed like they had powers that I just could never harness. I was just busy, and I didn't really see myself in that realm at all. And I wasn't, it was just getting started, really. But Ashley was very generous and she invited me to cook in Louisville. It was the first time I think I left the state with stuff, and I got invited to do Farm 2 Fork and some local things. But the first time that I got on a plane with food was to cook at Southern Foodways. It was an auction item and it was a dinner at the 21c in Louisville with Ashley Christensen, Anne Quatrano, Gabrielle Hamilton, Lisa Donovan, and Natalie Chanin was doing the tablescape snacks, like bread and beautiful tablescapes, and I-
Kerry Diamond:
Literally from Project Alabama.
Cheetie Kumar:
Yes. Yeah. Who's not a chef by trade, but just can do anything. A wondrous human.
Kerry Diamond:
That's a bunch of all-stars.
Cheetie Kumar:
Oh my God. I mean, can you imagine the terror? I look back and I packed stuff in hotel pans because I didn't know what I was walking into. And I was like, "Oh my God, you dummy." But I made some braised lamb and put some pomegranate seeds on it. It's a theme. But I remember seeing Gabrielle Hamilton and her chef wife Ashley, I've opened the elevator and there they were. And I was like, "Oh my God. It's like freaking Iggy Pop and David Bowie right here. It was just incredible. But she actually forced me to do these things that were so out of my comfort zone but I ended up learning so much. I mean, just that one trip I learned so much.
I met Lisa, who's my best friend now, and I found my people and I learned so much. And I would come back and that would influence the little tricks. And then I was like, "Oh, that's how you do a restaurant. It's not about starting from scratch each time." You start building, and it clicked. It really started to click sometime in like '14, '15. And the food was good. I paid very close attention. I was maybe a hawk about it. But people like good food.
Kerry Diamond:
People do like good food. You close Garland, Ajja opens-
Cheetie Kumar:
June of 2023.
Kerry Diamond:
Wow. So it's still newish.
Cheetie Kumar:
Still new. Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
You put your one-year anniversary you're coming up on two.
Cheetie Kumar:
Coming up on two. Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
How was that different from Garland opening?
Cheetie Kumar:
180. I mean, Garland literally who, what no, why? But Ajja, I underestimated how popular it was going to be out the gate. That was kind of scary in a different way. We were still the same people. We're still kind of DIY, flying by the seat of our pants, and a lot of curveballs got thrown our way on the lead-up and the kitchen is really small. It was all the opposite issues. Martin Street was giant, and this is 1800 square foot building that includes the kitchen. The line is tight, the prep space is nonexistent. But I knew I had the structure for the menu and I really wanted that thing to be modular. I wanted the whole concept is modular. There's the front, there's the middle, there's the outside, there's the lawn. We can do all the things that we were doing with a music venue and a bar and a restaurant in this tiny space.
And the menu has sections, so you can pull things out. At Garland, if you pulled, it was like a house of cards. You pulled one thing off the menu, the whole thing had to be rewritten because you just can't have too many coconut dishes. But this is modular, so you can change one dip and it's not a big deal. And you can change one thing on the market menu, no big deal. Supposedly. It's of course still kind of contingent on each other. But yeah, it was very intentional. So many things that we talked about. And we had a great management team from the get-go and we planned details. We really were thoughtful about how casual it is and how many steps of service are we going to have, what's the service going to look like. And then we still changed it, but being respectful for the kind of table that we wanted in terms of how do you eat this kind of food? It's not about having one dish in front of you. It's a convivial experience.
Kerry Diamond:
So funny you said convivial because that's the word I had in my brain.
Cheetie Kumar:
Oh, good.
Kerry Diamond:
It is such a convivial space. Even upon arrival, the murals outside, everything, it just really sets this tone before you even step in the front door.
Cheetie Kumar:
I mean, you enter in the back, which there's no real good reason for it. I mean, there is for us because we know what happened, but it's a restaurant speakeasy in that sense. But we really wanted people to go out back there and see what the space really has to offer and we want people to look at what are they having over there and make it-
Kerry Diamond:
You walk in relaxed and that's not always the experience.
Cheetie Kumar:
Oh, good.
Kerry Diamond:
It should be at every restaurant, but it's not.
Cheetie Kumar:
Yeah, I think we put those signs like keep going, keep going. Your guard gets down because you're waiting for the next thing and I think there's something great about the unexpected that changes your brain. It makes you more creative or open when you don't know what to expect. But when you walk into a restaurant, a hotel, it's beautiful. And the light fixtures are incredible and expensive and shiny. That's great too. I love that experience, but that's just not what this building is. So we really try to listen to what the space wanted. And it could have been Vietnamese food or something, but whatever it was, it was not going to be stiff. It's a fun place and the food had to be fun.
Kerry Diamond:
Tell us about the name.
Cheetie Kumar:
Ajja means “come over” in Hindi and Urdu. I know it has other meanings in Arabic. It's a word that every mom says who speaks Hindi when dinner's ready. Aaja, aaja, kha lo. And it's spelled A-A-J-A in Hindi. But the two Js just looked better. It happened. I was trying to find a name and had insomnia before Ajja opened or when we were still planning it and just trying to figure out what it's going to be. Doom scrolling.
And I just ended up on this story about this song from the '80s that I remember as a kid called "Jimmy Aaja" from a Bollywood movie called Disco Dancer. And I loved this song. And MIA did a cover of it in 2000 or whatever. And it had gone viral. It was 2022 and COVID was still a thing, and the lockdowns were so intense. And apparently, somebody made a TikTok using that song. It was like phonetically "Jimmy Aaja" apparently sounds like give me rice. And so I was like, oh my God. Ajja is such a great word. Anyway, but it had this food connection at that moment. You get a little loopy when you're insomniated, but it just stuck.
Kerry Diamond:
And there's a bit of a travel motif running through the menu. Some of the marketing materials. What's that about?
Cheetie Kumar:
Yeah. Airplanes and Paul's really into vintage airplane ads. And the Persian Airlines, all of the... Even now like Qatar Airlines and Emirates, air travel, the kind of glamour of that era of travel, the airplanes became a theme. And Ajja is also, it's an invitation. So, an invite to be transported, and we liked that.
Kerry Diamond:
So Cheetie, you have so many interests, and I know there are so many things you still want to do, and I think the last time I was in town, we met and had coffee at Heirloom. We're talking about a cookbook and I mean, you obviously have a memoir in you. You have a cookbook in you. Do you think you'll do those projects one day?
Cheetie Kumar:
I really want to. I need a structure. I know we talked about one concept and I've definitely been thinking about it, but I think this is my year to finally write the proposal that I was due two years ago, three years ago, five years ago. I don't know. But yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
What is time? Meaningless today.
Cheetie Kumar:
I know. What is time? Yeah, I'd like to make a record and I'd like to write a book. Those are my next-
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, wait, you're going to do another record? Very cool. Are you playing live much?
Cheetie Kumar:
Not playing live, but our year is set up. I got Logic on my computer and I'm really itching to go. There's little things that happened. I don't know, I'm just ready.
Kerry Diamond:
So would this be a Birds of Avalon project or something?
Cheetie Kumar:
I don't know. Maybe not. Maybe both. I don't know. It's hard. The reason I think with Birds of Avalon, there's six of us, six adult schedules.
Kerry Diamond:
That's tough.
Cheetie Kumar:
People have kids and their own businesses and jobs and whatnot. So I think I like making music on my own too. I've done a lot, even with Birds of Avalon, there were so many things that I finished in the studio by myself and I like that. I like the freneticness of punching guitars and only engineers will know what that means, but I like it. It's such a-
Kerry Diamond:
Will you sing this time?
Cheetie Kumar:
Yeah, I've been singing since 2013 or '14, I started singing more or a lot, I guess.
Kerry Diamond:
And we didn't even speak about the Independent Restaurant Coalition. So we have to talk about this for a few minutes because you have a new role with that organization.
Cheetie Kumar:
Yeah, I've been on the board for two or three years, and I just became VP.
Kerry Diamond:
Congratulations.
Cheetie Kumar:
I'm really excited. Thank you.
Kerry Diamond:
Tell us what the Independent Restaurant Coalition is.
Cheetie Kumar:
The Independent Restaurant Coalition, aka the IRC, was formed March 20th, 2020, obviously from the pandemic ended up being a nationwide coalition of restaurateurs and chefs advocating for the independent restaurant community. We've always known that there isn't an organization that advocates for the betterment of this aspect of the industry. There's another organization that does represent restaurants, but they include Denny's and Chili's and it's very-
Kerry Diamond:
Chili's, yeah.
Cheetie Kumar:
Yeah, very, very different. There's a lot of overlap, but for sure, there's a lot of things that we need and we believe in that are very different from places that answer to boards. And a lot of us are single shop owners or two or three. The focus for the first two years was a grant program for getting people out of the tremendous hole that was created by the pandemic, and that was the Restaurant Revitalization Fund, which did get passed. And astonishing to do that in two years. I think it saved a lot of people, myself included but now focus is on all of the other things that we're always absorbing on our bottom lines and our top lines. Things like credit card processing fees and immigration and labor laws. I mean, the no tax on tips or tax on service charges and all of those things that don't sound super sexy when you talk about them, but they're just really important. So we're a D.C.-based organization. We're nonpartisan and we work directly with lawmakers to not just talk about what we need but really try to have influence on policy.
Kerry Diamond:
Was policy always a passion of yours?
Cheetie Kumar:
Well, it was not always a passion. I did the James Beard Bootcamp program in 2018 and I learned so much, but I was like, "I'm not going to talk to senators. I'm not that guy." I don't look like somebody who's going to... Tillis is not going to talk to me but when the pandemic happened, it was like, are you kidding me? All the taxes that we've paid, restaurants have put so much tax revenue into this community and we have nothing and nobody will support us and nobody will acknowledge. And if I had a dime for every time somebody said, "Well, we're not here to support any faction of small businesses." Well, look at the revenue. You're here for that, but not to help us. So I got mad and then it's like, well, the math doesn't explain itself. You have to tell people and you can't just say, "The lawmakers have to be there for you." It's our responsibility to advocate for ourselves and so that's what I'm doing and I really do love it. I think it makes me feel a little less helpless.
Kerry Diamond:
There's a lot of chaos in government right now. How is that impacting IRC?
Cheetie Kumar:
Well, it's just started. I'm going up to DC. I think we're all on edge. There are everything from ICE raid preparation and the taxation on tips and the supply chain being massively threatened. I don't really know how we're going to navigate it, but I know we're not going to just sit on our hands. And I know that we are in a good position to... We haven't alienated anybody and I think all we can do is try and I don't know if reason is going to have any power in this climate, but it remains to be seen. But I do feel that independent restaurants are so tough anyway. It's a pretty fragile network and I would hate to see another existential crisis in our community. So yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Well, thank you for the work you're doing. Path for everyone-
Cheetie Kumar:
No, of course, let's see if it works.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay, let's do a quick speed round. You have great taste in music and TV and culture in general. What are you and Paul streaming right now?
Cheetie Kumar:
We have been watching iconic fashion designer biographies. So we just watched “Cristóbal,” the story of Balenciaga. We watched “The New Look,” which I thought was going to be this very light-hearted eye candy story of Christian Dior. Whoa. Very heavy.
Kerry Diamond:
Yep. Nazis.
Cheetie Kumar:
Amazing.
Kerry Diamond:
The whole thing.
Cheetie Kumar:
Nazis. Oh, brutal. And we just watched Audrey Tautou in the story of Coco Chanel. Those are our latest fixations.
Kerry Diamond:
What beverage do you start the day with?
Cheetie Kumar:
Oh, black tea with milk. Oat milk now.
Kerry Diamond:
I like oat milk.
Cheetie Kumar:
Yeah, it's fine.
Kerry Diamond:
Do you make your own?
Cheetie Kumar:
No-
Kerry Diamond:
I tried to make it once. It's a disgusting mess-
Cheetie Kumar:
It's slimy. Yeah, I've made hemp milk but-
Kerry Diamond:
Bless the oat milk makers out there for giving us a decent product.
Cheetie Kumar:
Right. I know.
Kerry Diamond:
Dream travel destination?
Cheetie Kumar:
Oh, right now, Vietnam, Malaysia. I'll take anything in that region of the world.
Kerry Diamond:
Last question. If you had to be trapped on a desert island with one food celebrity, who would it be and why?
Cheetie Kumar:
Oh, food celebrity. I guess Madhur Jaffrey because she reminds me of my mom.
Kerry Diamond:
I love her so much.
Cheetie Kumar:
Yeah. And I just like her whole aura.
Kerry Diamond:
I owe her a note. Madhur, if you're listening, we're always thinking about you.
Cheetie Kumar:
Yes. Thank you for everything, Madhur.
Kerry Diamond:
Well, thank you too. It was so good to see you.
Cheetie Kumar:
So good to see you.
Kerry Diamond:
And we get to see you tonight again at our OpenTable Sit With Us dinner.
Cheetie Kumar:
Yeah, I'm excited.
Kerry Diamond:
Yeah. Tamasha. That's going to be a lot of fun.
Cheetie Kumar:
Tamasha. Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
That's it for today's show. I would love for you to subscribe to Radio Cherry Bombe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and leave a rating and a review. Anyone you want to hear on an upcoming episode? Let me know. Our theme song is by the band Tralala. Our producers are Tarkor Zehn, Catherine Baker, and Jenna Sadhu. And our editorial coordinator is Sophie Kies. Thanks for listening, everybody. You are the Bombe.