A hot taste of India

Thavasi Renga Thavasi came from India to the U.S. 15 years ago because he wanted to do research and explore American culture. Now Americans are coming to the grocery store he owns in Port Washington to explore the culture of Indian food.

Renga Thavasi and his wife Rajeswari, or Raji, run the Indian grocery store Aathira Foods along Highway 32 on the south side of the city. In the store, they act as tour guides to help customers experiment with a new culinary experience.

“Customers are asking what things are. We explain it and they take one,” he said. “I’m trying to educate.”

Beside groceries, the store sells hot takeout food. Both elements have taken off.

“It’s great. The support from the community is overwhelming,” Renga Thavasi said.

Raji, who has a master’s degree in biochemistry, comes from a family that owned a grocery store in India.

She and her husband did “rough market research” before opening the store and liked the Port site because it is near I-43 between Green Bay and Mequon. The next-closest similar stores are in Brookfield, Milwaukee and Green Bay.

Some of the customers are Americans of Indian descent. “They always buy Indian groceries. They cannot get out of their food habit,” Renga Thavasi said.

But the majority are Americans looking to expand their tastes.

For those afraid of the heat of the spices, the store can adjust. “Whatever we carry here has three spice levels — mild, medium or hot,” Renga Thavasi said.

The prepared food, of which buttered chicken is among the most popular dishes, is selling so well that the family is considering building a restaurant in front of the store. They bought 1.3 acres of land at the store site with that in mind.

Renga Thavasi hadn’t always planned to come to America. He grew up on a farm in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu with chickens, goats, a small horse and a couple of cows to provide milk for the family. They grew lentils, vegetables, major and minor millets and “red chilis, of course.”

The area had no fast-food restaurants.

“Whatever mom cooked at home is what we ate,” Renga Thavasi said.

School clicked for him in 12th grade. “I figured it out,” he said. “Up to that point I was average.”

Renga Thavasi loves biology and earned a bachelor’s degree in zoology, then a master’s and doctorate from Annamalai University in southeastern India. It’s near the Kollidam River and not far from the Indian Ocean.

College, he said, “opened my eyes that there is a different world in which you can do research.”

He earned his doctorate on Aug. 8, 2007, and by Aug. 14 he was doing research at New York University in the Big Apple.

“Whenever you have a Ph.D. they call it a universal passport,” Renga Thavasi said.

An arranged marriage to Raji, who also grew up on a small farm in India, took place in 2009, and she soon joined him in the U.S.

In 2013, the couple came to Port Washington when Renga Thavasi got a job at Jeneil Biotech in Saukville, where he does research in the private sector on probiotics and flavor chemicals. He comes to the store at 4:15 p.m. after each day’s shift, and spends his weekends working there.

Renga Thavasi bought his first car in 2012, a RAV4. In New York, he said, “You don’t need a car. Just a $100 MetroCard.”

“We realized a lifestyle change is what we need, not location,” Renga Thavasi said.

Living in Wisconsin provides for a different pace of life compared to New York. People are more welcoming since they’re too busy in New York to chat, and Renga Thavasi’s commute to work from the Misty Ridge Subdivision is a breeze. Often, he’s the only one on the road and he gets to go home for lunch every day.

“This is amazing. You can close your eyes and drive,” he said.

The couple’s two children, Ashwin, 11, and Adhya, 8, attend St. Joseph’s School in Grafton.

Renga Thavasi’s favorite Indian dish is kadai chicken curry named after the iron wok it’s cooked in. He can handle medium to hot. His wife is on another level.

“Her spice level is twice what I can tolerate,” he said.

Indian dishes tend to taste spicier than American food because of the way they’re cooked. Spices are infused into the meat and penetrated to the core, Renga Thavasi said.

The family travels to India to visit relatives once or twice a year, and the relatives come to America to visit now and then.

Ashwin is excited to start working at the store. Renga Thavasi hopes he and his sister take over the business someday.

“We want them to learn. You build something and pass it on to the next generation,” he said.

For more information, visit www.aathirafoodsusa.com.