Spicing it up: Clay Oven restaurant to bring Indian cuisine to St. Joseph

By Cameron Montemayor

St. Joseph’s palate is expected to get a little spicier thanks to the upcoming addition of a new Indian restaurant on the North Belt Highway.

With 22 years of experience cooking in prominent restaurants in Rome, Italy, to New Orleans, owner and head chef Sukhdev Singh and his family are eager to bring one of the first authentic Indian restaurants to St. Joseph: Clay Oven Indian Cuisine.

“Do you see my face?” Amandeep Kaur, who will help run the restaurant, said with a smile. “My whole family, we are very excited to open a restaurant.”

Spice is the name of the game in Indian cuisine. An infusion of coriander, turmeric, cumin and ginger — among many other spices — helps create the savory aroma for popular Indian dishes the restaurant plans to serve, like lamb curry, mango chicken curry and tikka masala.

Ensuring all the meals are cooked to order with fresh ingredients is at the heart of Singh and Kaur’s culinary mission in St. Joseph.

“This is Indian food, authentic Indian food,” she said. “We make it fresh inside the kitchen. This is not frozen. We don’t use any kind of frozen stuff.”

Singh recently finished a seven-year run operating a popular Indian food truck in Fallon, Nevada. He and Kaur made the leap to expand and open a restaurant after years of glowing reviews and feedback from customers, many of them Navy officers at the Fallon Naval Air Station.

“We do not use any synthetic stuff,” she said. “This is very good healthy food … (especially) the lamb curry juice with authentic and good spices.”

While the India-natives have lived in the U.S. for more than a decade, they’ve only recently called St. Joseph home. The two are excited to bring their passion for food and offer a taste of their home country to a community with little history of authentic Indian restaurants.

“This food, I serve through the heart, my warm wishes and blessings also when we make food inside the kitchen,” Kaur said.

Kaur said they have their sights set on opening the restaurant by the end of January. Located at 1209 N. Belt Highway next to Panera Bread, Clay Oven is expected to offer delivery service.

“We just request to all St. Joseph people, please, you are most welcome,” Kaur said. “This is your restaurant, not mine. Because I’m open here for you. We are glad we are here in St. Joe.”