Last year, the family behind the Indian Grocery Store in Youngstown decided to take on a second adventure: their own restaurant, Urban Pind.
Shweta Nair and Amit Kumar own Urban Pind and Indian Grocery Store, located on Belmont Avenue in Youngstown.
Nine years ago, the couple moved to Youngstown from Pittsburgh and they’re originally from India.
In 2021, the husband and wife team decided to open a grocery store in Mahoning Valley to sell authentic Indian spices and products.
Indian Grocery Store in Youngstown became a success and last year, the family behind the business decided to take on a second adventure: their own restaurant.
Inspiration behind Indian Grocery Store
Nair said they often drove an hour away to Cleveland or Pittsburgh to find imported ingredients, produce and spices that reminded them of Indian home-cooked meals.
“One day, I told my husband, ‘We should open an Indian grocery store here.’ He said, ‘Are you sure? I don’t think so.’ I told him to just give it a try for a year, and if it works, that’s good. If it doesn’t, then it’s okay. We’ll back out and we’ll do something else,” Nair said.
Indian Grocery Store first opened in Niles before relocating to a bigger space in Youngstown in 2023.
The Mahoning Valley community responded with support and enthusiasm, according to Nair.
“We have lot of my American customers who love our store, as well as the local Indian community,” she said. “They love our store. They find everything, all kind of dry spices, lentils and all kinds of dry products. It’s like kind of a specialty store. Then customers started saying ‘You guys should open an Indian restaurant.’”
Opening Urban Pind
Chicken lollipops and garlic naan at Urban Pind in Youngstown. Kelcey Norris Mahoning Matters
Urban Pind opened in July 2024 at 3107 Belmont Ave.
As new small business owners, Nair said they weren’t sure how open the community would be to their ideas but received great feedback again.
Customers have especially liked ordering the goat curry, butter chicken, chicken masala, samosas, and, of course, naan bread.
Dishes are prepared according to customers’ spice-level preferences on a one-to-10 scale, and every order comes with a cup of complimentary masala tea.
“There’s hot, and then there’s Indian-hot, and there’s even hotter than that - South Indian hot,” Kumar said. “People like the taste of the food because we do authentic cooking. We don’t use one sauce for everything. The preparation for everything is different, every curry has a separate preparation. Authentic cooking is like what we do back home, so we wanted to bring it here and offer the same thing.”
Chefs at Urban Pind start the day by making five different sauces.
“When it’s time for cooking, that’s when they do their magic using those basic sauces,” Kumar said. “Even if it’s a tomato sauce, or onion sauce or a mixture of both, there are some other ingredients they’ll use like ground cashews and almonds.”
Kumar recommends customers new to the restaurant should try the Indian-flavored taco special, and for vegetarians, the fried soy.
He said the name Urban Pind comes from the Punjabi translation for village and directly influenced the interior style.
“It’s like our modern village,” he said. “That’s why we went with a contemporary theme in here. We put some traditional Indian beds here. That’s a tradition in India, people eat while sitting on the beds using a table, then at night they sleep on the same bed they used before.”
In 2025, Urban Pind will be hosting live music and karaoke events with a buffet for holidays like Valentine’s Day; details will be posted on Facebook.
Shweta Nair and Amit Kumar own an Indian restaurant called Urban Pind, located on Belmont Avenue in Youngstown, right next to their grocery store. Kelcey Norris Mahoning Matters
