Award-Winning Indian Delivery Brand Plans to Open High Street Curry Houses

Motu, Eater London’s restaurant delivery brand of the year, has announced plans to open bricks-and-mortar curry houses in London this year. Big Hospitality reports that JKS Restaurants, the group behind Gymkhana, Trishna, Hoppers and soon-to-open Brigadiers, has been using its five Deliveroo Editions sites as pilots, helping them to better understand the suburban London market, since its launch in 2016.

Motu currently operates out of Deliveroo Editions ‘dark kitchens’ in Battersea, Canary Wharf, Islington and Swiss Cottage, but is aiming to open its first fully controlled Motu-branded high street curry house in the capital before the end of 2018. (Based on the listings on the Motu website, it appears to have ceased operating out of its Editions location in Camberwell.)

Karam Sethi, one of the three siblings and founders of JKS, told Eater that planned locations remain completely open at this stage, but that the first opening would likely be in north London — in either Camden or Islington — but that Clapham and Earl’s Court (in the south) are also among the neighbourhoods under consideration.

The Motu brand is the cheapest and most populist of all JKS-operated restaurants — one which recognises a British nostalgia for ‘curry house classics’ (versus more high-end or regional-specific cuisines at Gymkhana, Trishna and Hoppers), with a menu that includes dishes such as chicken tikka masala, lamb rogan josh, chicken biryani, samosas and tadka dal.

More soon.

• The Sethis plan a string of curry houses under Motu brand [Big Hospitality]
• All of Eater London’s restaurant delivery coverage [ELDN]