Indian tapas restaurant to open at Mercia Marina
Family friends are set to launch an Indian tapas style restaurant at Mercia Marina’s new £3m Piazza building.
The restaurant, named Lotus, will be one of the first of its kind in the East Midlands and is based on a dining concept already popular in London and other large cities across the UK.
Sunny Chandhoke, a chartered accountant, and family friend Sanjeev Kumar are behind the plans for the new 120-cover eatery. Kumar is a director of NK Motors, based in Pride Park, which is the largest KIA motor dealership in the country.
Vid Patel, of Littleover, who is the former owner and founder of Jee Ja Jee’s restaurant, once considered to be the premier Indian eatery in Derby, will be the restaurant’s general manager.
Lotus, set to open in mid-June, will have a varied menu offering small plates of authentic Indian food. The dishes, designed to be shared by everyone round the table, will include grilled meats, vegetarian streetfood and home-style curries – all cooked to traditional recipes.
Chandhoke was born and bred in Derby and qualified as a chartered accountant with local firm HSKS Greenhalgh, living in Littleover before moving to London.
He said: “We had always wanted to go into restaurants and when Vid told us about a unit being available at the marina we thought this would be a great opportunity to introduce this concept in our home city.
“It’s more about relaxed dining with ‘tapas’-style sharing plates, which is essentially how people in India would eat. There are several restaurants of this nature in London but we are passionate about bringing this dining style to Derby.”
