Khaaja Chowk is a fast-food restaurant located in Delhi. The team from architecture and design firm, Lotus, has designed its interiors as a blend of urbane sleekness and unabashed street imagery.
Located in Delhi’s swank suburb, Basant Lok, Khaaja Chowk is a fast-food restaurant celebrating Indian street cuisine and culture. “We have adopted elements from the streets of India,” says Ankur Choksi, one of the partners in Delhi-based architecture and design firm, Lotus. “This is why there is a generous dash of fuchsia and red used through the space.”
To create an absolutely authentic experience in this fast-food restaurant inspired by the bustling, colourful Indian streets, where food thelas and gaadis jostle for space and attention, the architects have put in a 3-wheeler or a rickshaw as it is popularly known. “The fuchsia three-wheeler auto, universal in its presence throughout India as a street icon, is the mascot for the restaurant and also doubles up as a seating for guests,” says Choksi. “It is about celebrating the everyday man's existence on our streets, his Indianness, without translating that into kitsch.”
The place features a combination of compact fluorescent lighting and exposed GLS bulbs set on dimmers. To balance out contemporary materials like stainless steel, glass and corrugated GI sheets, the designers have used raw and natural Kota and Cuddapah stone.
“The site, all of 650 sq. ft., was a particularly complicated space. It was very tight and was created after dividing an existing property into an awkwardly shaped half,” claims Choksi. One side of the double-height wall within the restaurant is a rendition of an actual streetscape superimposed on a mirror wall, which reflects the customers’ images across it. The kitchen is tucked away on a mezzanine and serves the restaurant through a custom-designed mechanical trolley which carries food up and down on an open tray, and adds to all the animation around.
Calendar art, simulated postcards of film stars, educational charts, matchbox images and accessories like surma dibbis (kajal boxes), picked up from street stores, have been imprinted upon and encased within the tables, or used as props.
The colour palette is very strong and ubiquitously Indian - full of mehndi green, mustard yellow, fuchsia pink, and plain reds. “We have also used strong colours for instant brand recall. Customers associate the colours with Indian streets, and also with the restaurant.”
It is the attention to detail - like the use of flowers within the restaurant or a kadhai that doubles up as a sink - and the interesting interpretation of typical street elements, that distinguishes the otherwise urban vibe of Khaaja Chowk. “All the credit for the original artwork goes to the man on the street!” insists Choksi.
