Patak’s: Humble Beginnings to Great Heights

By Sarina Menezes

Behind the jars of Patak\\\’s pickles, pastes and spices on the supermarket shelf is a family rags-to-riches saga that began when Indian-born Laxmishankar Pathak left an unfriendly Kenya for London with his wife and six children in 1956. He even dropped the \\\”h\\\” from the Pathak name to make it easier for the British tongue.

It was during the time we lived in England in 2003 that I first discovered Patak foods. As we all know, cooking Indian food from scratch is time consuming and considering both my children were toddlers, no domestic help and juggling between home and work, I was looking for ways to rustle up Indian food quickly. There is only so much pastas and roasts and continental food that one can eat in a week.

So one shopping weekend, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Patak foods had a whole range of pickles, gravies and ready to cook products. Those of you who have travelled or lived in England would know that the Brits are crazy about Indian food and have rechristened the Indian cuisine, calling it Indian Curry! Their super markets are flooded with teeming brands of Indian ready to cook sauces.

But the products from Patak foods are different because they stand out as brilliant, popular, authentic products with longer shelf life. Patak’s is closest to home in terms of its taste and range and their gravies and pickles are perfect, unlike their saucy and sweetened competitor’s brands. Fast forward to 2015 in the coffee shop of The Club in Mumbai and it was a privilege and honor to have a cup of coffee and an hour long chat with Kirit and Meena Pathak to hear the Pathak’s story and the journey.

Lakshmishankar Pathak, Kirit’s father was born in 1925 in the Indian state of Gujarat. His family were poor farmers and when he was only ten years old his father died. His elder brother, now the man of the family, took the decision of immigrating to East Africa taking advantage of the British government’s incentives. In Kenya they found a large population of Indian immigrants who craved the tastes of home. So, displaying an entrepreneurial spirit that Indians and more so Gujaratis seem to have inherited, they opened a shop selling Indian sweets.

Coming to Britain

LG as he was known as, grew up and worked in the business. But as Kenya moved towards independence things were changing. So in 1956, LG and his wife, set sail for Britain. He landed in the country in the depths of a bitter winter in November 1956. The costly journey had used up almost all of the money he had saved or borrowed. All he had left was five pounds and a determination to build a life for his family in this freezing new country.

Somehow, even though he spoke little English, and only had a letter for a character reference from a Kenyan bank as recommendation, he persuaded a London bank manager to lend him the money to rent a house in Kentish Town. But getting a job was much, much harder. After weeks of pounding the streets all he was offered was one cleaning the sewers. At this point his wife took centre stage. She sold some jewellery, bought a set of battered pots and pans and starting making sweets and snacks on the family stove in the tiny kitchen. The sweets were as good as ever. And soon the queues were just as long as they had been in Kenya.

The whole family helped. Everyone in the family was expected to pitch in, including Kirit who was a little boy then. He and his brother delivered parcels of samosas and jalebis all over London. They travelled by the Tube because, back then, if you were under 11, travel was free. Since they could communicate very little in English, they would carry two scraps of paper to show people the address they were delivering to and their home address to get back. Within a couple of years the family was doing so well that they switched operations to a small shop behind Euston Station at 134 Drummond Street. Soon his father decided to drop the ‘H’ from the name of the business as it was always being mispronounced. That, incidentally, is why the company is called Patak’s.

A taste of India

Drummond Street may well have started out as an Indian goods and grocery store but soon it grew into a kind of community centre for Indians; a long way from home. People wanted desi goods shipped in from the subcontinent. And that’s how LG ended up importing stuff into Britain that had never been seen there before. There were vegetables, spices and herbs that are commonly used in the Indian cuisine.

He prided himself on always sourcing the best quality of goods that he could find. For example it’s a family legend that he was the first person to airfreight vegetables into the country. Kirit remembers this particularly as he had to slog it out to the airport at 4.a.m. to meet incoming flights and get the produce offloaded, processed through customs and into the shop by the time it opened at 7am.

This initiative resulted in the shipment of vegetables fuelling the next stage of growth in the family business. What happened was that one time when an order came in there was way too much stock for them to sell through the shop. Not wanting to waste the vegetables that would otherwise go off they decided to try and pickle them. So they did and it proved a runaway success.

LG observed a certain problem that in Britain people would keep opened jars of spices hanging round in their cupboards often for years at a time. So if they tried to use these spices to make a curry the taste would suffer from the fact that the spices flavor would have long since deteriorated. His stroke of genius was to create the right spice blend for a particular curry, then mix it with oil. As it is the contact with air that makes the spices go off, the oil meant that the glorious flavors of the freshly ground spices would last far, far longer. As a way of bringing the authentic flavors of India into Britain it was a massive step forward.

Of all the curry mix and sauces available in the super markets of Britain, only Patak’s sauces have oil in them. If you haven’t tried cooking with Patak’s spice pastes you should give it a go. They’re probably the next best thing to grinding the spices yourself. But who’s got the time to do that today? And once you’ve opened a jar, because its oil based, it stays fresh for up to 4 weeks.

Kirit left his academic studies when he was 17 and went into the business full time. He was the one who saw the potential for Indian food, but he never imagined that it could become such an accepted and loved part of British culture. He met Meena on a buying trip to India and discovered she had a degree in Food Technology and Hotel Management. So it was no surprise when she joined the company and started working on new ways of sharing the love of Indian food with Britain.

One of her first big successes was an authentic tandoori paste. They realized that in this day and age, often with both parents out to work, families didn’t have as much time to cook as before. Their solution was to develop a range of cooking sauces. Again they proved to be immediate winners. You could prepare authentic Indian food in the shortest time possible. Meena’s cooking was such a success that she went on to write several popular recipe books.

Now Patak’s is available in over 40 countries, and my personal favorites have always been the Hot Mango Chutney, Jalfrezi and the Roganjosh – dishes made so easy by Patak’s, considering how long and elaborate the process is to make these dishes from scratch.

Culinary Adventures

Kirit and Meena’s lovely daughter, Anjali started her very own culinary school in Mumbai, passionate in taking the Patak legacy forward. Keen to introduce international flavours in Indian homes, she started professional cooking classes under the name of ‘Flavour Diaries,’ Mumbai\\\’s space for international food experiences. A highly-trained international Chef and food personality from London, Anjali is a gourmand guide par excellence.

As they say, it takes one generation to create a legacy and another one to take that legacy into the future to greater heights.

Sarina Menezes is a freelance writer based in Mumbai.