Copper & Clove opened in 2019, in a 400 square foot space with one tandoor and four tables. The idea was simple: cook Indian food the way our grandmothers did, without cutting corners for speed.
We spent the first year figuring out how much smoke a coal tandoor could put into a small kitchen before the fire department noticed. We got better at it. By year two we'd knocked down a wall, added a proper exhaust, and started grinding our own spice blends instead of buying them ready-made.
The name comes from two things we couldn't cook without: copper vessels for slow reductions, and clove because it's the one spice that shows up in almost everything we make, in small enough amounts that you never quite notice it, until it's missing.
We're not trying to reinvent Indian food. We're trying to cook it properly, one plate at a time.
Today we're still a small kitchen, just a bigger one. Everything is still made from scratch, every morning, by the same three cooks who opened the doors in 2019.