The owners of Gymkhana and Hoppers, two of central London's most successful restaurants of the past decade, will start an online Indian kitchen with its own chefs and menu offering home-delivery of popular dishes such as chicken tikka masala and pork vindaloo to new parts of the capital.
JKS Restaurants will open Motu - a name derived from the Hindi term for a fat person - on Oct. 17. It's in conjunction with Deliveroo, whose new RooBox arm will provide a dedicated kitchen in Battersea. The move follows growing popularity of home-delivery services in the U.K., where Deliveroo alone operates in 63 cities.
"There's a gap in the home-delivery market," said Karam Sethi, who owns JKS with his siblings Jyotin and Sunaina. "We are setting up a team, and Motu will have its own kitchen, branding, website and design. The menu will be a greatest hits of takeaway dishes, only done properly and cooked fresh."
Motu will offer boxes starting at £20 ($26) that contain a main such as lamb rogan josh or paneer butter masala, along with sides including pilau, naan, saag aloo, samosa chaat, tadka dal, cucumber raita, pappadums and mango chutney, plus rasmalai dessert. Extras - if you want to feed more than one - are likely necessary and will cost from £8. Motu will initially serve southwest London.
JKS has opened several breakout restaurants. Gymkhana won a Michelin star within a year of opening in 2013 and was named U.K. National Restaurant of the Year. Diners queue for as long as four hours to eat at Hoppers, which specializes in the cuisine of Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka. Other JKS properties include Bao, a Taiwanese bun restaurant known for its long queues; and Bubbledogs, serving Champagne and hot dogs.
Deliveroo, based in London, started in 2013 and now works in more than 100 cities worldwide. This April it launched RooBox, providing off-site kitchens to London restaurant partners.
Motu follows the creation of a similar Deliveroo offering by Clockjack, a free-range rotisserie chicken business. Clockjack City Deliveries has been created by Fraser Duncan, a former managing director at Terra Firma; and Jerry Goldberg, former chief operating officer at Centre Parcs Europe. It's aimed at City workers.
Motu Indian Kitchen will focus on a different area, south of the River Thames, with deliveries to Fulham, Clapham, Chelsea, Wandsworth, Putney and Battersea.
Articel by Richard Vines, chief food critic at Bloomberg
