A Gujarati immigrant created an empire in an 800-square-foot room tucked away on Chicago’s Devon Avenue. - NBCAsianAmerica
The country's first Patel Brothers in a South Asian neighborhood on Chicago's Devon Avenue in November 1984.In an 800-square-foot room tucked away on Chicago’s Devon Avenue, a 20-something Gujarati immigrant was on the verge of creating an empire. It was 1974, and Mafat Patel had just bought the only Indian grocery store for miles — a cramped reservoir of dals, spices and rice packaged in cloth bags stacked to the ceiling.
“He was able to read the market,” said Happie Dutt, a historian and Chicago local who has frequented Devon Avenue since she moved to the city in 1976. “‘If I feel like this, there are many people who must feel like this.’” “They’ll serve you a hot chapati and you’re standing there thinking, ‘This is like someone serving me at home,’” Dutt said. The first South Asian immigrants to come to the U.S. after the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act were all up against similar obstacles as Mafat Patel, now 77. Many were alone — student visas were common, and along with that often came isolation. Dutt was one of those students, arriving to study at the University of Florida when she was 19 in 1972.
“If you go to Devon, you can actually see what’s happening on our subcontinent,” said Shiwali Varshney Tenner, 47, who has lived in Chicago for almost 20 years years. “When Rohingya Muslims were being expelled, you could see quite a few of them there.” In the same aisles that have ingredients for chole masala, aloo gobi and chicken nihari, there are also traditional South Indian rasams, sambars and uttapam.When Varshney Tenner first arrived in Chicago, she was starting her life over. As an Indian immigrant and former New Yorker, she lacked any ties to the city, but she immediately gravitated to Devon.