With its pale, saffron-colored walls, dark wood, palm fronds and Indian-style chandelier suspended from an ornate recessed ceiling, the Bombay Club it probably wouldn't come as much of a shock to spot the ghost of Rudyard Kipling or Graham Greene tucking into a curry in the corner. The décor is straight out of hill-station India and a far cry from the red-wallpapered curry houses familiar to anyone who has eaten Indian food in England.

But although some dishes on the menu are styled “Unabashedly Indian Curries,” none will raise the kind of sweat that makes your eyes smart and scalp tickle. While executive chef Nilesh Singhvi is determined to produce food that is as authentic as possible, he says he does so without making anything too heavy, too rich or too hot.

“In hotels in India now we are cooking light meals, not heavy as with Indian cuisine before,” he says. In Washington he has changed the way he handles his spicing. “I use all of the spices but less of the hot spices. So this way the hot spices don’t overtake the flavors. In Washington the food is more flavorful.”

His dishes come “a little bit from everywhere,” though his favorite food region is Rajasthan, where he grew up. “That state is very fond of eating.The Jodhpur people are excellent in cooking, including my mother. The food is more spicy. But I like South Indian, too. They eat hot food, with ground chilies and black pepper.”

There’s a difference, he explains, between the powers of different-colored chilies. “Green chili pepper doesn’t give color but gives hotness and flavor. Red chili doesn’t give any flavor, only heat and color. Black pepper gives flavor and hotness plus color. We also have in India a yellow color chili. We dry it and powder it and use it in curries that we don’t get here.”

When he left school, Singhvi enrolled in the prestigious Institute of Hotel Management in Ahmedabad, where he trained in classic French, Italian, Indian and Chinese techniques and learned about wines and restaurant management. His diploma there landed him in a job with India’s top luxury hotel chain, the Taj Group. Over 17 years he worked his way up to become executive chef at their hotels in Maharashtra, Goa and Madhya Pradesh, teaching himself in each place the regional cuisines that now appear in dishes on Bombay Club’s menu. The job had him cooking for foreign dignitaries like Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President George H.W. Bush and titans of industry like Bill Gates.

After so much time with one employer, he decided to accept a new challenge and took himself off in 2004 to Nepal to become executive chef at the whimsically named, five-star Hotel Yak & Yeti, in Kathmandu.

Unfortunately it was a time of upsurge in the civil war that had begun in 1996 between government forces and Maoist rebels. Singhvi had two small children, a son, now 9, and a daughter, now 6, and he feared for their safety. “In one month it was very bad,” he says. “I decided that we’d better leave. Even now it’s not fine. But the country is good.” Although he had been there only one year, he began to look for a means to get out.

“One of my colleagues knew Ashok Bajaj [owner of The Bombay Club] and through a friend of mine I got in contact.” There was another incentive in making the move. “I wanted to see the U.S. and I wanted to cook on my own,” he says. “Because a chef in a hotel in Asia doesn’t get enough time to cook by himself. The focus of the job is more on managing the team.”

He and his family arrived in Washington in January 2006 and set about establishing themselves in Falls Church and finding their way around local Indian suppliers. Singhvi sources most of the ingredients he needs for his cooking in local Asian markets. Favorites are the Korean chain H Mart, the Maryland trade supplier L & M Enterprises, and markets on Lee Highway in Virginia that sell to the general public, like A1 India and Patel Brothers (“They keep everything!”). He can also depend on distributors in New Jersey and Maryland that regularly import fresh supplies for area restaurants and markets.

When I ask him where he goes out for Indian food himself in Washington, a brief look that suggests he can’t possibly have heard me right slides across his face. “I eat at the Bombay Club.” But then he relents and says he also goes to Amma Vegetarian Kitchen in Georgetown for its dhosas, the lacy riceflour crepes filled with vegetable curry, and its idlis, dumplings dipped into wet curries. He also goes to Langley Park’s Woodlands, and he and his family like Italian and Thai food. “The children especially like pizza and also like tacos.”

He sees them on weekends, when he has half of Saturday and all of Sunday off. “And I bid them goodbye when they leave for school” each morning, he says with gentle formality.

Singhvi’s family came over from India for a visit. They all went to New Jersey, where they have relatives, and to New York and Niagara Falls. His latest travel plan is to take his children to Orlando.

He’s proud to live in Washington. “I knew that this city is not as New York or Chicago” — the cities with skyscrapers that for strangers are the visual templates for all of urban America. “But it’s capital of the U.S.”

The Bombay Club (202-659-3727; bombayclubdc.com) is located at 815 Connecticut Ave. NW. Main courses cost $15 to $32.

This article by Julia Watson first appeared in the Northwest, Dupont, Foggy Bottom and Georgetown Current Newspapers. Photo Bill Petros/The Current.

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1 Comment

1. Dr. Arun Mehta, NCERT Campus, Delhi

   Great to see Nilesh your profile.