Conversations with Diaspora: Noreen Hiskey of Inland Curry

The range of international cuisines available in cities is generally, though not exclusively, determined by its immigrants. The diversity of offerings within each cuisine most definitely is.

Noreen Hiskey lives five hours inland from Seattle in the city of Spokane, with a South Asian population of less than 1 percent. The Mangalorean home cook moved from Pune to Washington State over a decade ago, but grew deeper roots in the city when she began cooking for its residents.

For years, Noreen ran a popular blog called Picture The Recipe, where she first shared “random recipes I concocted in my kitchen” but eventually gravitated towards Indian flavours and the use of spices. The site offered step-by-step visual recipes making it super accessible for both inexperienced cooks as well as neurodivergent folks, and contained a large selection of western and Indian comfort foods and game day dishes. 

During the pandemic, the food blogger, chef and food photographer bought out local business Inland Curry, a weekly takeout kitchen to serve up regional Indian dishes never offered in Spokane before — think beef ularthiyathu, chana bateta and semolina kheer, changing perceptions and palates around Indian cuisine.

LOVER chatted with her to learn about her journey.

Photograph by Ari Nordhagen

How did your journey when it comes to food begin? 

I guess my journey begins with a passion for food as an expression of love that was definitely passed on to me from my mother. She always showed friends, family, neighbors and even strangers that she cared by feeding them or sharing recipes and just talking about food in general. 

I found myself moving to the United States 10 years ago, not knowing anyone but my husband and his immediate family and started trying to make connections through food and inviting people over for a meal. Seeing my passion for food, my husband encouraged me to start a recipe blog, which I still have to this day (although I'm not active on it anymore). It also got me hooked on food photography which I still actively do professionally today. 

How did you get into cooking for others?

After 8 years or so of food blogging and being online, I realized how much I missed the human/social element of cooking and actually feeding people and watching their reactions to it while making memories & connections around the table. This led to me doing a few intimate supper-club-style dinners at home, putting it out there to see if anyone in my little town of Spokane, WA was interested in a unique experience of Indian food and hospitality. To my surprise my dinners sold out instantly and I kept getting asked to do it more often. 

Doing it at home with a baby under the age of 1 year was challenging most times, but amazingly enough new doors opened up when a local restaurant owner (and now good friend) invited me to do pop-up style dinners at her restaurant on days they were closed. My 10-12 person dinners become 40-50 person experiential style dinners with the focus on changing the perception of Indian food but expanding menus to include more regional flavours I grew up eating and not just the Indian restaurants in the U.S, standards like Butter Chicken and Chicken Tikka Masala. 

My pop-up style dinners were popular and proved how much Spokane was open to good food and experiences. Through my pop-up and work as a food photographer around town, I grew connections with the close knit small food-business owners and restaurateurs around Spokane. 

Is that how Inland Curry came about?

I guess my name made its way to a Dan Todd who at the time owned a small weekly take-out business selling a rotating menu of Indian dishes he had learnt, from a friend with the same business model in another small town in Northern Idaho. It was called Inland Curry. His family had decided to uproot and move to Arizona and he was looking for someone to run his business and through the grapevine he had heard of my pop-up dinners and reached out to me.

It was serendipitous and I jumped at the chance to have a regular space to do Indian food and an established business to take over, so I made him an offer to buy out the business (instead of just running it). 

I now do regional Indian menus every Thursday for take-out and patio dine-in as well as catering and occasional pop-ups at other locations and that's where I am at right now.

When it comes to eating, Spokane has had a bit of a cultural renaissance over the last decade. Can you tell me a little bit about what it was like when you first moved there as compared to now.

There has definitely been a huge growth in the food scene as compared to a decade ago when I moved and most options to dine-out were either fast-food or big chain restaurants. Since then Spokane has grown in population and diversity as more people from neighbouring states like Oregon, California and even western Washington are relocating to the area because of affordability. Which in turn has brought more opportunities for smaller restaurants and an openness to diverse cuisines as bigger cities would offer. It has been great watching this growth in the food industry here unfold over the last 5-6 years and I'm excited for the future of the city.

At Inland Curry, you cook everything from green kheema to pork bafat. What goes on in your brain when putting together a menu?

I honestly cook like my mom used to at home back in Pune, however I try to stick with a region, city or cultural group while deciding on a menu. For example I did a Goan menu with chicken cafreal, peas pulav, vegetable caldeen and coconut dal. I have done Bohra cuisine, Mumbai street food, Kashmiri food to Parsi cuisine and Kerala, Tamil Nadu menus in the past. 

So I really mix it up giving them a taste of ‘if you went to someone's house and got to eat their regular family-style dinner’ food. I also tend to stick with dishes I am most comfortable making which come down to the dishes I have eaten the most (thanks to my mom, friends and neighbours sharing their food and cuisines with us) and are very familiar with the flavours to try to recreate them even if I haven't cooked them myself before.

You’re also a food photographer! What do you get to photograph that you enjoy?

I absolutely fell in love with food photography when I started blogging. Making food look so good that you want to try it right then and there took years of practice and something I will enjoy honing in for years to come. I have since shot for multiple publications and also numerous restaurants and food truly is creative art and getting to photograph that which chefs pour so much of themselves in is such a joy. After years of having to cook and photograph food that I made myself it is very refreshing when I shoot for another chef, business or restaurant so I am not having to wear both hats at the job, shuffling between stove and table setup and I can fully focus on just the photography aspect. 

I recently wrapped up shooting a client cookbook with over 85 recipes in the span of 5-6 months while still doing Inland Curry and tending to a toddler. It was really cool to learn not only the process but also to nurture a different perspective and keep in mind the scope of the project, where everything had to have a cohesive style and honour the author-cook's vision.

Click here for Noreen’s recipes for pork vindaloo and vanilla cardamom kulfi.
Visit Inland Curry online here and here.