Copyright Charleston Post and Courier
TEGA CAY — Tucked away on a side street behind Walmart in Tega Cay is an Indian supermarket, an Indian restaurant and Santhoshi Radhakrishnan’s cooking studio where she teaches people how to cook chicken tikka masala and other dishes. But the passion for Indian meals isn’t tucked away in this corner of Tega Cay. In the last year, two Indian restaurants, Tandoor Indian Cuisine and Tikka Shack Indian Grub, have opened in Rock Hill. Triveni, a grocery chain with a few locations in the Charlotte metro area that carry the essential spices for Indian dishes, opened its eighth location in Tega Cay over the summer — and first in South Carolina — with its companion eatery, T’s Kitchen. That all happened in the decade since Radhakrishnan started offering Indian cooking lessons in her home. She transitioned to opening her business, Santhoshi’s Kitchen, in 2023, at the end of Stonecrest Boulevard in Tega Cay. It’s where her customers are learning to make their own spicy meals. “They'll say that they want to learn to make Indian food because they tried making at home, but it never turns out the same as it is in the restaurant,” said the India native who immigrated to the U.S. in 2007. “It’s a three-hour course. They start without knowing how to make it, and by the end they feel confident they can make it at home.” For those relying on eating out rather than cooking, the options are growing nationwide. CNBC cited data from market research firm Datassential, showing new Indian restaurant openings in Dec. 2024 hit 115, up from just 54 in Sept. 2018. Radhakrishnan didn’t believe a restaurant was the right fit to explore her passion for cooking, thus she gravitated toward the cooking class model. Plenty of chefs have joined her across the region, opening cooking instruction businesses focused on other types of food. In the case of Santhoshi’s Kitchen, it’s filling a niche that people are willing to drive from out of town to experience, she said. “I have some people come in from Charlotte and Concord, and I had one guy drive from Columbia, which is like an hour,” Radhakrishnan said.
