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Battle for the chopsticks
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The Chinese franchisee restaurants have a fight on their hands as Chinese in the city pick up the business gauntlet. SERISH NANISETTI finds out
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Photo: K. Murali Kumar
The real thing Ring in Chinese New Year with authentic Chinese cuisine
As the moon rises on 4706th year, the Chinese in Hyderabad find themselves living in interesting times. Outside Tung Kein on Raj Bhavan road, near the parking lot, the sounds of clanging wok from the kitchen suggest stir fry cooking native to China,
while the smell of roasting red chillies suggest otherwise.
Inside, Mr. Huang is a busy man as the lunch hour diners tuck into Chowmein, Schezuan Fried Rice, Chilli Chicken and other Chinese fusion food that they have evolved and popularised right across the country. There is a paper signage (The restaurant will remain closed on Thursday for the Chinese New Year). So, are the franchisee Chinese restaurants ruining his business? “Of course they have, to say that they haven’t affected our business would be wrong,” says Mr. Huang who has been running the restaurant for the past eight years. “But I am sure the clientele would come back to taste the authentic food and the reasonable prices that we have,” he says.
Now there is a cat among the pigeons as franchisee chains create copybook fast food centres that duplicate the soulless formula of success.
Enter the Aromas of China in the City Centre Mall and the aromas are much more robustly East Asian with the oyster sauce making its presence.
Try Yo! China at Panjagutta and there is a squeaky cleanliness about the place where you enter and order fast food the way bandiwallahs have popularised it (there is even parked pushcart for takeaways) mix and match it and exit all within a span of half hour. No leisure eating and waiting here.
“These people (franchisee owners) have lot of money and formulas. They can pick and choose locations. They have marketing gurus and cooks working in tandem to experiment with the menu, tastes and prices. But we are confident that we know what Hyderabadis like. And there is place for everyone,” says a restaurateur.
Just to show an index of being in-touch, the portions of any rice item will match the quantum of rice that usually comes with biryanis at the native Chinese restaurants, while the quantum at the franchisees would be just about sufficient for the pinstrip-blackberry-I-am-in-a-hurry kind of folks.
To show how the business is evolving search ‘Chinese Hyderabad’ and 10 results pop up in the local.google.co.in among them is the 8-year-old Tung Kein along with some of the favourite names.
“It has not affected Chinese business in any way,” says Yuking Peter Yu of Shanghai Dry Cleaning near St. Patricks School in Secunderabad.
“When a restaurant opens with Chinese name in it, the local clientele think that it must be Chinese owned, they go there three or four times and then they realise the mistake and come back to the Chinese-owned eateries,” says Peter who is an alumnus of All Saints, Nizam and is an Osmania University MBA.
“Some restaurants are hiring Chinese cooks but they lack the Chinese touch,” says Peter.
He names Chung Hua, Haiking and Nanking as dishing out the most palatable Chinese food in Hyderabad. “Nanking is a clever fusion,” he says nailing down the subject.
As they would say in Mandarin Xin nein kuai le! (Happy New Year!).
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