How Ambika brought the flavors, memories and hospitality of her Indian childhood to Western New York — one vada-pav at a time.
Ambika remembers her grandmother cooking for 20, 30, sometimes 40 people without measuring much of anything.
“She had this magical measurement system in her brain,” Ambika says.
There were no measuring cups or written recipes. Her grandmother simply knew. The food came out the same every time — the same spices, the same quality. Ambika grew up in a joint-family home in India, where her mother, grandfather and other relatives cooked for large groups and where there always seemed to be someone coming through the door.
Her grandmother also ran a small home-based business making powdered spices, rice and turmeric. Her father was an artist. Her mother ran a grocery store selling peanuts, millets and lentils. The women in her family made decisions. Food was work, but it was also how affection was expressed.
“If you are at my doorstep, I will treat you like God,” Ambika says.
Today, Ambika is the founder of Buffalo’s Vada-Pav & Bites, a vegetarian Indian street-food business that has grown from farmers markets to festivals, catering and larger public events. But when she talks about the business, she still tends to talk about people.
She came to the United States at 21 after marrying a man who was studying for his Ph.D. in Ohio. She had grown up in what she calls a “hard-core vegetarian family” and had never eaten meat.
Coming to America meant figuring out food all over again.
“In India, you can go out to a restaurant, or around the corner you have a bunch of options — snacks, street food, main courses,” she says. “Over here, there was no distinction between vegan and vegetarian.”
She remembers seeing the meat-heavy choices in American restaurants and wondering how people ate all of it. Back home, food was prepared fresh and usually for the day. Waste was discouraged. Leaving even a bite on the plate could bring a reprimand.
“I could tell my mom ten times a day that I am hungry,” Ambika says. “She would make everything on sight. Feeding her children was her most important priority.”
Moving to America meant there was no mother in the kitchen waiting to make something. There was no street vendor around the corner. Even Indian restaurants could be difficult for someone concerned about meat and cross-contamination.
Ambika and a close friend began thinking about what they could make that would carry something of their culture while also inviting Americans into it.
The answer was vada-pav.
The simplest description is an Indian potato sandwich. But that hardly captures it.
The vada begins with mashed boiled potatoes seasoned with ingredients such as mustard seeds, turmeric, garlic, chili and curry leaves. The mixture is shaped into a patty or dumpling, dipped in a chickpea-flour batter and deep-fried until crisp. It is placed inside pav, a soft, fluffy white bread roll not unlike a small slider bun.
Then come the chutneys: green coriander-mint, tangy tamarind and a dry, fiery garlic-coconut mixture. A fried green chili may accompany it.
For Ambika, though, one particular condiment carries an even more personal connection: dry peanut chutney, also known as shengdana chutney or shenga chutney pudi. Made from roasted peanuts and spices and ground into a coarse powder, it is a familiar condiment in Indian cooking — and a taste that connects Ambika directly to home.
Her mother and grandmother still make it. Ambika makes it, too.
The combination is inexpensive, portable and filling, which helps explain why vada-pav became so deeply associated with Mumbai. It emerged as a quick meal for working people and became a fixture of the city’s street-food culture. Today, it is found throughout Maharashtra and has become one of India’s best-known comfort foods.
In Mumbai, vada-pav is practical food — something a commuter, student or daily wage worker can eat with one hand while continuing through a crowded day. But Ambika remembers something else about it.
“In Mumbai, there is more love in making the street food,” she says.
That idea reaches back into an older Indian tradition in which food is not viewed merely as physical fuel. It is understood as a manifestation of the divine, sustaining not only the body but also spiritual consciousness. Annapurna, an incarnation of the goddess Parvati, is the Hindu goddess of food and nourishment. Her name comes from anna, meaning food, and purna, meaning full or complete.
In that tradition, cooking can itself be a sacred act. Food is prepared with attention and gratitude, and wasting it can be understood as disrespecting the nourishment Annapurna represents. Feeding another person is not simply an act of hospitality; it can also be an act of care and devotion.
For Ambika, those ideas were part of everyday life. Food was an offering, something prepared carefully and shared with gratitude.
“There is more love in making the street food in Mumbai,” she says. “We are making it for our Goddess. The blessing from the Goddess.”
She believes that is part of why food should never be taken for granted. Her family had faced economic challenges, she says, but they never ran out of food and never went to bed hungry.
“We treat our food as a God,” Ambika says. “We make it with a lot of love and care and attention. That is why you take a bite and you feel that warmth. It is hot and full of love.”
That reverence also helps explain something else Ambika remembers from childhood: food was never to be casually thrown away.
“In India, we are not allowed to leave one bite on our plate,” she says. “We don’t want to waste because we make food only for the day.”
Food was prepared fresh in her family, something to be eaten rather than stored away.
“We don’t believe in frozen food,” she says. “My mom made fresh and yummy food every time.”
That belief has followed her into business.
At farmers markets, Ambika gives people samples and watches their reactions. Some customers worry that the food will be too spicy. Others tell her they expected more heat. Either way, she wants them to make up their own minds.
She started at the Williamson Farmers Market and gradually began appearing at other events. At a vegan festival, she saw people who were curious about something they had never tried.
“I wanted to catch their eyeballs and tongues,” she says.
She describes herself as a “gypsy character,” moving from one opportunity to another, trying to understand where her food belongs.
The business has also changed the way she thinks about Buffalo.
“I came here at a tender age, and I am the way I am today because of the Buffalo energy and culture,” Ambika says. “It made me a different human, and I am so proud.”
She talks about moving through different neighborhoods and encountering different religions, ethnicities and immigrant communities. She has met people from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Turkey, Egypt, China and Vietnam and found that food can become an unusually easy way into conversations about culture.
“I could keep my cultural identity but blend in with my new friends here,” she says. “This journey of my business made me realize that it is not about telling others about my culture; it is about accepting everyone’s perspective.”
A customer might first approach because they are hungry. Then comes the question: What is this? Where is it from? How is it made?
Suddenly, a snack becomes a conversation about India.
“When they come to me, they want to know about my culture, my spirituality,” Ambika says. “They do accept me because I am coming from a different country.”
She wishes Buffalo had more food festivals where people could encounter those differences casually, without having to know anything in advance.
The business has continued to grow. Ambika has moved into catering and is considering cooking classes, a vegetarian Indian food truck and expansion into communities including Rochester.
Growth, however, creates a problem she understands very well.
Ambika wants her hands in the food.
“If I don’t touch everything with my own hand, I won’t be able to transfer that warmth,” she says.
That makes scaling difficult. She knows she will eventually have to trust other people with parts of the work, but she worries about what happens to the food when she is no longer able to oversee every detail.
For Ambika, quality is not a marketing slogan. It is the difference between something people remember and something they forget.
“When you give people the best food and quality food, people will pay thousands of dollars,” she says. “If you give them frozen food, they won’t give a damn about it.”
Her approach to entrepreneurship has taught her things she did not know about herself. She discovered that she could stay calm in difficult situations. She also discovered that she could be impatient — especially when she wants to respect everyone’s choices and time.
Punctuality became part of that lesson. If she tells people she will arrive with food at a certain time, she believes she owes them that time.
She sees that sense of responsibility as part of becoming confident — not confidence as self-promotion, but confidence as keeping your word.
And underneath it all is the lesson she inherited from her family: make enough food.
She remembers a family wedding where 500 or 600 people were expected and 800 eventually arrived. The cooks had prepared for the expected number, but her family had always learned to make extra.
“You never really knew how many people would come. And you never wanted to run out.”
That instinct remains with her. Ambika says she has a fascination with giving away her vada-pav.
It is an old-fashioned idea in a business culture that often measures every interaction by its ability to produce a sale. But for Ambika, food begins somewhere else: Someone is hungry. You make something. You make it well. You serve it hot. You see what happens.
“I wanted to make vada-pav famous,” she says.
Now she wants something larger than fame.
She wants a community around it.
Inside the food is the kitchen she left behind: her grandmother’s mysterious measurements, her mother’s fresh cooking, the crowded family table, the expectation that if someone arrives at your door, you feed them.
Ambika has brought those things with her.
Now she is finding new people to share them with.
Get connected: buffalosvadapavbites.com