Dosa Kitchen is the culinary collaboration of Nash Patel, who grew up eating dosas in Hyderabad, India, and New York cookbook author Leda Scheintaub. The two met in a South Indian restaurant in NYC where Nash was waiting tables. Nash offered advice on what to eat and how to eat it, and a spark ignited. Nash brought tea leaves, ginger, and cardamom to their first date, and over a lesson in chai-making their future together was sealed. Soon after the couple moved to Vermont, where they launched Dosa Kitchen food truck to share their love for the dosa and passion for local food. When the food truck started bringing destination diners from New York and Boston, they knew they were on to something.
Nash and Leda went on to write the first US cookbook on dosas, Dosa Kitchen: Recipes for India’s Favorite Street Food, which was published by Penguin Random House in 2018. Motivated by customer comments that their dosa batter is the best they’ve had, they started packaging it and recently secured a factory space so they can get it and other products out more widely. Each arm of Dosa Kitchen—food truck, cookbook, packaged dosa batter—is part of Nash and Leda’s greater mission to make dosa a household name in the United States.