Butter chicken over noodles. Kebabs playing with mozzarella cheese. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
That’s what could be coming next from Rajiv Chopra, who studied Italian cuisine during culinary school in India.
First, there’s Bombay Velvet. Opened Monday, it’s a high-end, authentic-meets-innovative menu that Chopra calls a “gastronomical adventure to India.”
Northern Virginia Indian restaurants don’t typically serve Old Delhi-style fried chicken, or cheese-stuffed mushrooms in malai, a creamy sauce, or moussaka, a Greek-inspired stack of eggplant and ground chicken baked with cheese and tomato sauce.
“What we’ve done here, there’s nothing like this in Virginia,” says Chopra, who also owns the counter operation Punjabi by Nature, the first of which opened in Chantilly’s Lotte Plaza Market grocery store nine years ago. There’s now one in Lansdowne and another in Tysons, the latter set for a makeover with new design and menu items.
Bombay Velvet, a decadent space in RTC West with velvet chairs and glamorous, gilded lighting, will serve a salmon tikka appetizer decorated in black garlic dust with a caper-olive chutney on the side; artichoke, jackfruit and broccoli arranged in a masala gravy; scallops in a Hyderabadi-style spicy peanut sauce; and lobster with coconut cream from the Bengali region.
The region has seen an uptick in trendy Indian restaurants: ultra luxe Punjabi Grill, plus Pappe and Bombay Street Food, from Asad Sheik, best known for NoVA’s Curry Mantra.
Pulling inspiration from all over the subcontinent, Chopra, a native of New Delhi, is already plotting more locations of Bombay Velvet, and hopefully, another concoction mixing India and Italy. // Bombay Velvet: 12100 Sunset Hills Road, Reston
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