By Chuck Martin
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Jasvir Singh and his wife, Cathi, stock shelves at Jagdeep's Indian Grocery in Clifton. (Michael Snyder photos) | ZOOM |

No doubt about it, Jasvir Singh has the location.

His little Jagdeep's Indian Grocery sits next door to Amol India Restaurant off Ludlow Avenue in Clifton, and just across the parking lot from Ambar India Restaurant. Step out into "Indian Alley" between the two, and you can smell curry wafting from the restaurants. Makes you want to buy something Indian.

Plus, Singh's store is close to a population of international students and faculty, many of them Indian, who are looking for authentic ingredients to buy and cook.

Singh certainly has location, and much more.

The one-man band has seemingly unbounded energy and personality to sell food. If Jagdeep's is your Indian experience, Singh is your host.

Typical evening

BIT OF EVERYTHING

Jagdeep's Indian Grocery 356 Ludlow Ave., Clifton 961-2699 Open: 11:30 a.m.-8:30 p.m. Monday-Thursday; noon-10 p.m. Friday-Sunday. Browsing the aisles: Jasmine, basmati and Indian rice; cracked wheat and corn flour; dal, beans and split peas; eggplant, turmeric, chiles, curry leaves and other fresh produce; frozen Indian gourd and other vegetables, prepared microwaveable meals and samosas; frozen fish; spices, chutneys and sauces; frozen naan; flavored papadam; spicy Indian snack assortments; take-out desserts; Indian cookbooks, CDs and DVDs.

INDIAN POPULATION GROWING

Greater Cincinnati may see more Indian groceries opening soon to meet the demands of a growing Indian population. According to the 2000 census, the number of Indians moving to the region increased by 140 percent between 1990 and 2000 - from 3,566 to 8,572 - second only to the number of Mexicans moving to Greater Cincinnati, which increased by 203 percent (from 3,380 to 10,254). Indians represent the region's largest Asian ethnic group and Mexicans are Greater Cincinnati's largest single ethnic group.

Early on a Friday evening, customers are lined up in front of his counter, eyeing DVDs and music CDs. A woman has deep-green chiles, waiting to be weighed.

"Who's next?" Singh asks the crowd.

An Indian music video plays on a small monitor overhead. Three college age-looking kids stroll in to dance to the music, and then goof around with the ginger root in the produce section, in the back of the store.

Singh, meanwhile, is juggling the demands of his customers, his bright yellow "Shaq" cap bobbing up and down behind the counter. A non-Indian customer asks for help finding ingredients. Singh guides her to his great aisle of spices.

Then, the phone rings and Singh chats rapid-fire in his native Punjab dialect. Another customer approaches while he's on the phone. Singh stops talking and asks her politely in English:

"Can I help you?"

The college kids leave, buying only a few Indian snacks.

"Have a good night, guys," Singh yells.

Then he flashes a wide, bright smile that might persuade some customers to go ahead and buy a 20-pound bag of basmati rice - even when they didn't need it.

Few people are born with the talents and skills for succeeding in retail sales, and Singh must be one of them.

"I love people," he says. "God created all kinds of people, like flowers. Beautiful people.

"Sometimes you just have to look really hard to find them."

He smiles again.

Lots of luck involved

With his winning personality and this location, Singh is doing well, after just opening his grocery last summer. But he admits there was some luck involved. Good luck following bad luck.

Jagdeep's Indian Grocery on Ludlow Avenue in Clifton. | ZOOM |

Until late 2001, he and his Wisconsin-born wife, Cathi, owned a restaurant in Asheville, N.C. She hired him as her manager and they married four years ago. (She loved his smile, too.) The Singhs had to close the restaurant when tourism declined and the economy faltered. Singh knew relatives who owned Amol India, and thought he and his wife could find work there - he as a waiter and she as a cook.

They moved to Cincinnati last year with plans to work in the restaurant a while and open an Indian grocery.

"We knew there were other Indian groceries in town," Cathi says. "But we thought one in Clifton would work."

Location, location, location

The couple had difficulty finding the right location - one with ample parking and plenty of room to store large bags of rice, flour and other products. Then, last summer, Singh heard the futon store behind Amol was moving. It was the ideal place to open an Indian grocery in Clifton. Perhaps anywhere.

Singh opened the store in August, and named it for his 10-year-old nephew in Asheville.

"Jagdeep is a skinny little kid," he says. "A good kid."

Cathi still works at Amol, so she can watch the store if her husband has to leave.

"People come here and go to one of the restaurants," Singh says. "They eat some Indian food they like and decide they want to try to cook it at home. And I'm right here to help them."

Often in the afternoons, cooks from Amol and Ambar wearing white aprons stroll into the store to buy a last-minute dash of spice or bag of rice. It's almost as if Singh has a captive audience.

He did study economics in India, so maybe this was all in his business plan. Jagdeep's is open every night, when Amol and Ambar restaurants are busiest.

Teaches customers to cook

About a month or so after he opened the store, Singh had another idea.

"I watched American customers go up and down the aisles and then they would come to me and ask what to do with them," he says. "I thought: I will teach them."

Actually, his wife teaches them. Since December, Singh and Cathi have taught Indian cooking lessons once a month. Trained in classical French and Italian cuisines, Cathi taught herself to cook Indian at her Asheville restaurant years ago.

On Sunday mornings at the store, Cathi demonstrates simple cooking techniques using a hotplate for 15 to 20 students. Unlike most other cooking classes, though, there is no charge at Jagdeep's. When he started offering the classes, Singh didn't realize other people charged for such a privilege.

"Why should they have to pay?" he says. "They shop here. They'll come back."

Most Americans who come looking for ingredients, Singh says, are fairly sophisticated about Indian cooking. But if there's one message he'd like to tell everyone, it is that all Indian food and cooking is not the same. Everything in India is not spicy curries and rice.

The food from his verdant home region of Punjab, in the northwest of India, for instance, is rich with cream and clarified butter called ghee. Generally, Punjabis eat less spicy food, he says, more chapati (unleavened bread) and less rice than their neighbors in the south.

Singh stocks the foods of all Indian regions: A rainbow of dal, peas and beans; spices, whole and ground; chutneys and sauces; eggplant, turmeric, curry leaves and other fresh vegetables; frozen vegetables and frozen, ready-to-bake or microwave meals; burfi, khoya and other takeout sweets, and nearly two full aisles of Indian snacks, most of them spicy, fried chickpea flour twigs, sticks and nut assortments.

"Indians put the snacks in bowls for guests to eat as soon as they arrive," says Singh.

If customers keep buying the snacks and other products, Singh admits he may open a second grocery. He moved to the United States in 1996 for more freedom and opportunity, and he's found it.

"But you know another thing I like about this country?" he says. "If you are dying on the street here, they don't ask if you are Christian, Muslim or Jew. They don't care. They land a helicopter to take you to the hospital."

"Of course, once you get there, they may ask if you have health insurance."

The smile is back.