Preeti Waas, chef and owner of Cheeni in Durham, is known nationally for creative dishes. photograph by Alex Boerner

As customers walk through the tall glass doors of Cheeni, they’ll immediately encounter Preeti Waas’s maternal glow. The chef and owner of the upscale, diner-style Indian restaurant in Durham is known for her desire to both feed and educate her guests about the origins and preparation of a dish. She might share how a small-bites plate like the baby brinjals — petite eggplants roasted in masala — recalls but doesn’t replicate a childhood favorite, or she may articulate the differences between the tandoor oven-cooked naan and the crisp paratha flatbread that she also serves as an accompaniment.

Her spirit, her homestyle rather than highly technical cooking, and the presence of her daughters — both employees at the restaurant — make a meal feel like a trip into her family home, as if you’re being welcomed as a cousin who’s been away too long. By being as genuinely herself as she knows how, Waas makes the space for her diners to do the same. To take comfort in her comfort food.

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For as long as she can remember, Waas has been trying to get away from something. In the beginning, it was her family.

She grew up in 1970s southeastern India, in the city of Madras, now known as Chennai. She had a tumultuous upbringing that left her feeling unsafe and uncared for. She responded with a defiant spirit, seeking freedom.

“I’ve been riding motorcycles since I was 10 years old,” she says, sitting at a table inside Cheeni. “Speed was always my thing.”

At 16, Waas was racing motorcycles. By her estimation, she was the only girl in her conservative state who knew how to ride one, or at least who dared do it on the open road.

As a child in India, Waas hoped to escape her restrictive upbringing in the city of Madras (now Chennai) in the southeastern part of the country.  Photography courtesy of Preeti Waas

As she talks, her younger daughter, 21-year-old Ellie, is nearby, cleaning at the long bar, and listening. Ellie might be the one to greet patrons when they arrive, or to serve them. Like her older sister, Amy, 24, Ellie does a little bit of everything here.

“Tell the story about the school bus,” she urges as she walks by to refill glasses.

In high school, Waas’s class took a trip up into the countryside. When they arrived at their destination for the week, the chaperones told everyone to take a nap. When they awoke, the bus was missing. Waas had stolen it. She and a friend had driven down winding, cliffside roads to the nearby town, where they enjoyed mutton kabobs that their vegetarian teachers wouldn’t have endorsed.

Today, Waas honors her younger, rebellious self and her family with personal photos that hang in Cheeni’s hallway. photograph by Alex Boerner

At 51, Waas finds it easier to look back and see the pattern of rebellion, to understand why she so urgently needed to leave home. It’s why, at 21, she took a job as a flight attendant, among the earliest trainees of India’s first commercial airline. It let her escape her family home and experience the Indian subcontinent through its street food.

It’s why, two years later, she left for the United States the day her visa was approved. Initially planning to visit, she fell hard for her sister’s coworker, John Waas, and eloped to Vegas two weeks after their first date. They’ve been together since.

But after years of running from her family, she ended up running from herself, as well. While living in Tulsa, Waas tried to assimilate. She wore blue jeans and T-shirts. She gave up Indian holidays and traditions. When she opened her first café in Oklahoma, she only served American food.

Waas’s warmth is everywhere in Cheeni, from popular dishes to her relationships with her daughter, Ellie (far left), and employees Lauren Markowitz, Iliana Flores, and Jessica Cadeña. photograph by Alex Boerner

“I was uncomfortable being me, because nobody liked me for me, is how I felt,” Waas confesses, her hands clasped on the table. “When people liked things I made, that was one way to get them to like me. Putting something Indian on the plate felt like a risk.”

It’s hard for people who meet her now to square this story with the person who stands before them.

Cheeni has earned Waas consecutive James Beard Award nominations — one of the food world’s highest honors — for Best Chef: Southeast. Here, she exclusively cooks her own style of regional Indian cuisines.

“It’s sentimental food, but not because I have good memories associated with it,” Waas explains. “It’s because I choose to extract the food memories and assign good things to them. I can’t do that with people — I can do that with food.”

The food Waas prepares at Cheeni is sentimental to her, like the chicken kabob roll. photograph by Alex Boerner

Her menu is a resplendent representation of where she’s come from, where she’s been, and who she’s become.

“I feed people in the way that I wish I had been fed as a child, and I don’t mean literal food,” Waas says, her warm eyes sparkling yet serious.

Waas was quiet for so long, now she jokes that you can’t get her to stop talking. She’s as open as her restaurant’s massive windows, which offer guests a view directly into Durham’s central plaza. Waas rarely stops moving either, but it seems much more like she’s running toward something now.

In addition to her beloved dishes, Waas leads cooking classes, where she’s able to share what she calls “the country that resides inside her,” to breathe new life into the memories that dance in her head.

Through her cooking, Waas has reinvented herself. At Cheeni, she serves patrons dishes as rich as the stories behind them. It’s for her, as much as it is her cooking, that people keep coming back.

Cheeni
202 North Corcoran Street, Suite 100
Durham, NC 27701
(919) 908-0220
cheenidurham.com