Grace Regan is the founder and owner of the critically acclaimed SpiceBox curry house in Walthamstow. She believes Indian food is the perfect gateway to vegan cuisine and her biggest food influence and inspiration is her great aunt Dolly who is South Indian. Grace grew up eating her food and cooked her first curry aged twelve. She would cook for her parent’s parties and was obsessed with TV cookery shows. Grace first travelled to India at eighteen inheriting her mother’s love for the country and has returned every year always scribbling down notes and learning from home cooks on her travels.
Grace is also an entrepreneur with an interest in using business as a force for good. After being named one of the UK’s best young entrepreneurs in 2015 (aged twenty-five), she won a place on a top Silicon Valley accelerator and moved to California. It was there that she made many food trips eating in new exciting vegan restaurants and exploring incredible farmers markets. California completely shaped her view on food and her approach to cooking. This is where she became vegan. Disillusioned by the tech world and keen to make her dream of opening a curry house a reality, she moved back to London and started SpiceBox from her home kitchen.
Grace’s first street food stall was opened in 2016 in Druid St Market with the aim of bringing meat-free lunch to the masses. She earned a cult following thanks to the comforting dhals, and tandoori cauli steaks. Later she joined Kerb and traded at street food markets across London and food festivals around the country.
She opened the first SpiceBox curry house in Walthamstow in Jan 2019. Her plan to pay homage to British Indian curry-house cuisine and traditional Indian home cooking in equal measure, bringing a vibrant sustainable dining option to high streets up and down the country.
Grace’s writing has been published in the Guardian and Huffington Post and she was longlisted for the BBC Food Rising Star Award. She now lives in Margate so she can swim in the sea every day. Grace is opening a second SpiceBox early next year, along with a retail range of SpiceBox products, which will be hitting shelves nation-wide.
