Laura Glesby Photo
The lights are off inside Tikkaway's Orange Street storefront.
A beloved Downtown restaurant specializing in healthy, “fast-casual” Indian meals has shuttered its doors.
Tikkaway, a restaurant whose devoted customers included Downtown workers, Yale students, and even former President Bill Clinton, closed in August. Gopi Nair founded the restaurant at 135 Orange St. in 2013, aiming to provide affordable, nutritious, and dietary-restriction-friendly Indian recipes for customers on the go.
Nair said he shut the restaurant down just over a month ago due to health challenges and pandemic-era staffing shortages.
He still finds it hard to accept that the nearly-10-year-old restaurant is closed. “That’s my life’s calling,” he said. “I put everything that I am in it. It was me — my entire philosophy.”
Paul Bass Photo
Gopi Nair: "I put everything that I am" into Tikkaway.
Nair said he closed the restaurant in part due to severe back pain that the long hours and commute from Norwalk had been exacerbating. Like many restaurants, Tikkaway has also encountered difficulty maintaining a full staff since the pandemic began, Nair said. His family urged him to quit as his health took a toll: “You are literally killing yourself for this,” he said they told him.
Nair said he started the restaurant after his son was born, when he started to pay more attention to his own family’s nutrition and diet. He said he asked himself throughout his restaurant’s tenure: “Would I be OK feeding my children Tikkaway food every day?” He strove for the answer to that question to be “Yes,” and found joy in seeing other parents’ ease at knowing their kids were eating well at the restaurant.
Nair expressed particular pride that the restaurant was “a part of rebuilding the area, bringing more life around.” The neighborhood blossomed over the course of the restaurant’s decade there. He thanked the Town Green Special Services District and his landlord, Juan Salas, for helping the restaurant thrive.
Though Tikkaway may be gone, Nair said he hasn’t left New Haven’s culinary scene forever.
“I know I’ll come back,” he said. “I don’t know when and how.”
Bummer. I was a fan of that place.