Bold draw: burgers by Manna
(Picture: Press handout)Karam Sethi is looking remarkably relaxed as he mentions, in an offhand kind of way, that for his next trick, he’ll be feeding 10,000 Londoners a week. Along with siblings Jyotin and Sunaina, Sethi is the man behind restaurant titans JKS, the group who have a hand in some of the capital’s most celebrated spots, from Sabor to Bibi to Berenjak. Their gaze has now fallen on what was the Arcade Food Theatre, which come Friday will open as the all-new Arcade Food Hall.
There’s more to the magic than changing a much-mocked name. Scrubbing aside the “theatre” pretensions, Sethi and his team have done away with the rest of it too, more or less. The bones remain — there are still counters and kitchens, with a bigger restaurant upstairs — but that’s about it. Once restaurant names glared on white light boxes, but those boxes are gone now, and so are the restaurants. Racks of chairs have been replaced by plush pink sofas. Cold bare walls are now wood-panelled. Where before diners used to queue at counters and leave with buzzers that would shake when the order was ready, now these have been scrapped too, replaced by a slick new ordering app and table service. So often does Sethi say “well, the first thing we got rid of was…” that one might think it was a catchphrase.
