Vikram Cotah, CEO of GRT Hotels & Resorts.The Kari Theory restaurant brand which is slowly evolving to suit the city it opens in began its life when GRT Hotels was renovating one of its properties The Radisson Blu Hotel GRT Chennai. ET HospitalityWorld spoke with Vikram Cotah, the CEO, GRT Hotels & Resorts, about the brand which recently opened a branch in Radisson Bengaluru City Center.
The local flavor of the restaurant is one which is reflected in the logo itself with the outlets in Tamil Nadu having a Tamil K, and the one in Bengaluru getting a Kannada K, Cotah began by saying.
“Kari Theory is something we developed because there was a big niche for people who wanted to enjoy street food, but had these problems of hygiene and the crowds. “We felt there was an option of taking the food and putting it into a cleaner environment,” Cotah said.
Their culinary team went about scouring the city and getting what could only be termed as heirloom recipes from outlets which usually made just a few specialty dishes to compile into the restaurant menu.
“We were able to get the recipe somehow and then came back to our hotels and our kitchens and started recreating and deconstructing the recipes, putting them back together and our creative chefs started to plate them differently,” he said, adding the before the launch of the restaurant, both in Chennai and more recently in Bengaluru, this process took upwards of six months with teams going across the individual states.
Kari Theory by GRT Hotels and Resorts.With Bengaluru firmly established, the next destination—and this time the outlet will open in a GRT Hotel—is Andhra, where obviously the Ka in Kari will change to Telugu. Also on the cards is another outlet in Madurai, he added.
They have been getting inquiries to set up more Kari Theories in places as far removed as Kashmir and the United Kingdom.
“We have already got an inquiry to set up a Kari Theory in London. A couple of investors want to take the brand there because of the popularity of street food,” Cotah said.
The other target for international outlets is naturally the GCC, he added. Although currently the strategy was to open outlets within GRT owned hotels, Cotah did not discount the option of opening up individual outlets in other locations.
