From Kolkata to MacDougal Street

The Kati Roll Company started with something missing. Payal Saha grew up in Kolkata, where kati rolls are street food all over the city. When she moved to New York, she could not find one.

So in 2002 she opened a shop of her own, at 99 MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village, a short walk from Washington Square Park. She wanted a place where she could eat her hometown's street food. It turned out a lot of New York wanted the same thing.

The move itself was recent. Eater NY, profiling the couple in 2016, noted that they had arrived in New York only about two years before the shop opened, with little to no restaurant experience between them.

A very small room

The first store was tiny. Eater NY, writing about the company in 2016, put the original space at 300 square feet. One writer who knew it early remembered only a few seats, Bollywood posters and sizzling kati rolls. That suited the food. A kati roll is made to be handed over hot and eaten on the go.

Payal had never run a restaurant. She told QSR Magazine in 2024 that in 2002 they were "inexperienced and passionate about the food of our hometown." What she had was a clear memory of how a kati roll should taste, and she let her desire for the real thing drive her.

Two people, side by side

There was no money for a full staff, and no way of knowing whether New York would take to a fast food it had never seen. So at first the whole store was Payal and one assistant. Between them they did everything: grinding fresh spices, making the bread from scratch and grilling the fillings, side by side.

That way of working is still the way we work. We marinate our ingredients daily, grind our spices, squeeze the limes for the chutney by hand, and never use pre-packaged foods or sauces. The menu has grown since 2002, but the method has not changed.

Anil joins the same year

Anil Bathwal, Payal's husband, joined her at The Kati Roll Company in 2002. Before that he was a Creative Director at one of the world's biggest advertising agencies, and it was his career that first brought the two of them from Kolkata to New York. He had no formal training in hospitality, just a lifelong obsession with food. As Managing Director, he grew the one-store eatery into the company it is today.

Word got around

The rolls did the rest. Word spread about the food, the New York press started writing about it, and regulars kept coming back. Within a few years the Kolkata papers were covering the little shop in New York, and food writers from out of town were looking it up on their visits. We collected twenty years of that coverage in one place.

The Kati Roll Company is often credited with introducing the kati roll to American diners. The simpler version is the one this post started with: she missed a food, so she made it.

Payal went on to become a regular speaker at business and food conferences. She still lives in New York, where she cooks, gardens and thrives on good food.

MacDougal Street today

The original store is still at 99 MacDougal Street, and it is still the late one: open until 3am on Friday and Saturday nights, and until midnight the rest of the week. The poster wall is still there too. You can read more about the walls in our stores.

From that one room came seven stores: four in New York, two in Texas and one in New Jersey. Every one of them cooks from the same recipes and the same spice blends. Read more about Payal, or the whole of our story.