BUENA PARK, Calif. — The restaurants along Beach Boulevard, a dusty stretch in this Orange County suburb, are primarily known for their larger-than-life aesthetic: the immense gray fortress encasing Medieval Times, the 18th-century Spanish galleon inside Pirate’s Dinner Adventure, and the lanky neon guitar neck standing tall next to Rock & Brews.

So it’s not all that remarkable that an Indian restaurant sits within a four-level, sandy pink Mission-style villa that used to be a Ripley’s Believe It or Not! museum.

What is surprising is that this imposing building — its entrance presided over by a statue of Buddha left from a previous incarnation — has been chosen to house the first American restaurant from Sanjeev Kapoor, the most famous chef in India. Mr. Kapoor runs his own 24-hour food channel, hosted one of the longest-running cooking shows in Asia and oversees a multimillion-dollar empire complete with restaurant franchises, cookbooks and endorsement deals.

Even more unusual are the people Mr. Kapoor has chosen to run this place, called the Yellow Chilli: Satvinder Ghotra and Kamal Kaur, a husband-and-wife team who have never opened or run a restaurant.