Upkar Spices & Pickles

Upkar Spices & Pickles is located over at Hathipole 252. If you walk past our door, you can usually smell the red chili powder or the tangy scent of mangoes soaking in oil. It’s a strong smell that stays on your clothes all day. We spend a lot of time sorting through bags of spices and making sure the jars are sealed tight. Hathipole is a crowded area, so there’s always a lot of movement outside our front step. Inside, things are a bit more focused on the work at hand. We have big containers of pickles sitting around, waiting for the flavors to set just right. It is not a quick process, and we don't try to rush it because that’s not how good food works. Some of the recipes we use have been around for a long time, and we just keep doing what was taught to us. We don't have a big marketing team or anything like that. People mostly find us because they live nearby or their neighbor told them about a specific jar of lime pickle they liked. The shelves are mostly full of different sized jars and packets. Sometimes we run out of a certain spice because the harvest was late, and we just tell people they have to wait a week. It’s just how things go with natural ingredients. We stay busy with the packing and the cleaning, which takes up most of our afternoon before we close up.