Voted Best Chef in the area for five consecutive years, and Best Indian Restaurant for ten, Chef Vimala Rajendran and her Curryblossom Cafe remain award-winning gems in Chapel Hill. Her commitment to use local, healthy ingredients gained her recognition by UNC's Gillings School of Public Health as a Public Health Hero. Her ongoing advocacy for food as a human right earned Chef Vimala the Pauli Murray Award for “serving the community with distinction in the pursuit of equality, justice and human rights for all citizens.”

She calls herself an “accidental chef” because the path that brought her to where she is today was not the one she would have chosen. It took a 25-year journey that brought her through domestic violence and life as an undocumented single mother 8,000 miles from her home in India. Circumstances landed her in this country with no family, no permission to work, no child support, no public assistance, only the assurance that God was with her. Her university degrees were useless here without status, but her lifelong passion for food proved to be providential preparation for a new career.

Encouraged by neighbors and friends, she launched a home-based cooking business. Word spread fast of fresh, healthy ingredients from the local markets and captivating aromas and flavors. A donation jar that never turned anyone away for lack of funds and a warm, welcoming atmosphere of hospitality attracted a remarkably diverse crowd. The popularity of her food grew so rapidly that it soon became a local underground phenomenon with 80 to 100 people enjoying her weekly buffet.

The underground food business spawned a brick-and-mortar restaurant in 2010, financed by the community that had sustained Vimala and her family for years. In July, 2010 nearly 1000 people flocked to the restaurant’s “Grand Blossoming” and Vimala’s Curryblossom Café was born. Chef Vimala has never looked back, having the assurance that an unseen Hand closed all the doors she sought to walk through and guided her back to her first love. That love is evident in every bite of food that she serves.