Thursday, March 28, 2024
46.0°F

Family

by ELENA JOHNSON/Coeur Voice contributor
| September 12, 2020 1:00 AM

Usually you have to be a regular to meet everybody at the joint.

But at India House all you have to do is fill your gullet.

At least, it was as easy as saying “Chicken korma, please” this Sunday.

In Kootenai County, we’re no strangers to family businesses and mom-and-pops. So Deepika Dhawan, Manoj Kumar, and Nouman Mushtaq are not the first family to share their home cooking or homey feel with the community (and thank goodness, because there’s a special hole in my heart only garlic naan seeped in curry can fill).

But not every lovable family restaurant can perfect the art of introducing each customer to the crew, one by one, in the form of a perfectly timed “Can I get you anything else?” or “How is everything today?”

It’s one of those little “above and beyond”s our local places like to spoil us with. And it’s even more impressive in a new business – which apparently is running smoothly enough for owners to take time to greet guests.

And even more impressively, no one showed any sign of repulsion as we greedily stuffed our faces with kormas, curries, and koftas.

Now that’s class.

Dhawan and Kumar also own Karma Indian Cuisine in Moscow. But that didn’t stop either from being present on Sunday.

Although eventually Mushtaq will take it over from his sister – Dhawan – for now she and Kumar drive daily between Moscow and Post Falls, ensuring the cuisine in either location is up to snuff. Like all great chefs, it seems she wouldn’t stand for poor quality.

They won’t complain about it either. Dhawan says it’s “fun time” for them.

But don’t worry, I won’t go on about the food. Not because it isn’t fantastic, of course, but because I am not at all qualified to review the food scene.

“The err, kofta…ingredients were paired with a uhh, delicious yellow curry of some kind which may or may not have been a light reduction…..”

It would be an insult to chefs, the greater Indian cuisine world, and perhaps even Dhawan.

Besides, it would make us all hungry, despite my incompetence.

But I will go on about our collective spoiling by local restaurants.

There’s probably pockets everywhere where you can become the kind of regular where everyone knows your name, but here you probably know the cashiers at the grocery store you only go to once every couple weeks when you pick something up after work. Because they’re that friendly (and okay, the area is on the smaller side for sure).

You notice when there’s new hires at your neighborhood joints. They notice when you change your order – so they’re probably the first to know when you’re on a new diet, trying to cut back on sugar or caffeine, and they might even see your haircut before your own household.

In a way, it kind of keeps us all in the family.