One day in 2001, a friend approached him about developing desserts for his Indian restaurant. Dr. Parekh happily agreed, and, using the same methods he had developed for Kwality, made a few batches of ice cream.

Soon, restaurant patrons were begging Dr. Parekh to start his own ice cream shop. Just two years later, equipped with his recipes and a name he knew would connect with his Indian customers, he opened Kwality Ice Cream in a small strip mall in the Little India section of Edison.

“We used the same name to capitalize on the good will the brand had built,” he said. “We wanted people to think of the back-home taste.” The word Kwality, he added, was not trademarked in the United States, so he felt free to use it. (Unilever, which still produces the original brand under the name Kwality Wall’s, did not respond to requests for comment.)

The design of the tucked-away shop plays off the nostalgia of American ice cream parlors — bright pops of red on the walls, posters of caramel drizzling temptingly over a sundae, a flashing neon sign — though the ice cream’s taste appeals to a nostalgia of a different sort.