In the last year, almost every F&B property has had to re-think its format vis-a-vis engagement, safety and revenue. For brands like Wow! China - that have always steered towards diversity in design - it’s significantly easier to adapt versatile avenues. The brand’s second casual dine restaurant in Kolkata at Salt Lake Sector V is designed as a bistro, it offers the familiar ‘Chindian’ faire that the brand has managed to create a market for, but with more experiential value.
With 50 outlets spread across 7 major cities like Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Pune and Hyderabad, Wow! China consists of kiosks, food court outposts (in malls or tech parks), high street locations and also cloud kitchens. In Kolkata alone Wow! China has over 20 outlets across all formats. Wow! China’s Murali Krishnan shares that this multi-pronged approach has only helped the brand engage more consumers.
“Wow China essentially works with six different formats in space; there’s a kiosk format, a food court outlet, then there are airport outlets, then there are high street minis like the James Long Sarani outlet where we have five or ten seaters, then there’s high street maxi and then there’s a casual diner like our Park Street outlet. The bistro would be an extension of the casual diner format, we wanted to make it much more experiential. We stand for desi Chinese, we started thinking about how we can incorporate this sense of fusion in our decor and set-up and you’ll find a lot of distinct elements that sync with our brand,” he tells us.
The 82-seater Chinese-Indian Bistro spanning over an area of 4000 sq ft. plus boasts an array of stylish props and cultural elements, like hand-pulled rickshaws with cushioned sheets, murals and designs done by the art college students using Chinese watercolours, the Chinese style hand-painted fans and modernist neon lights. The menu also offers a number of mocktails like the Wowjito or the Alexander de Great. “We’d been getting a lot of queries for buffets and we decided to introduce the buffet here and we plan to introduce buffets to our Park Street outlet as well; we have some signature dishes here like the Schezwan Chilli Eggs and Indo Chilli eggs because we get so many eggetarian diners, we also have a signature Butter Garlic Crab,” Murli Krishnan
Buffets start from Rs 495 (on weekdays) and Rs 545 (on weekends)
Our recommendations: Chicken Wrapped Prawn, Chinese Bhel, Chilli Cheese Stuffed Mushroom