MKT, New Delhi
Four kitchens and a bar under one roof, planned as one business.
Read →A CONCEPT FOR LUTYENS' DELHI
EXC
ELS
IOR
OZUMO
A modern Japanese bistro — the izakaya, translated for the capital. Neither bar nor restaurant, and deliberately so: small plates meant for company, drinks refined enough to deserve them.
CONCEPT AUTHORSHIP · WRITTEN FOR AN EXISTING LUXURY BAR, HEART OF NEW DELHI
LOOK & FEEL — LACQUER, BACKLIT GOLD, THE COUNTER AS PROSCENIUM
I · THE IDEA
Between the bar and the dining room sits the izakaya.
Japan's izakaya is the rare institution that refuses both of its parents: it is not a pub, though it drinks like one, and not a restaurant, though it cooks like one. Plates arrive small and keep arriving, built for a table of friends the way Seville built its tapas. The drinking is serious without being solemn; the food is there to keep the conversation honest.
The moment is right. Japanese cuisine has become the world's shorthand for eating well — precise, seasonal, light on the body and rich on the palate. OZUMO takes that appetite and gives it an address: an izakaya of the highest finish, inside one of the capital's storied hotels, minutes from the government quarter.
II · THE ROOM
The counter is the theatre.
A live sushi counter at the entrance — sashimi and nigiri cut in front of the guest, with an omakase seat for those who surrender the ordering. A teppanyaki counter for the theatre a flat iron makes of dinner. Bonsai to hold the theme without costume. And the quiet infrastructure that makes a bar habitable at midnight: sound-proofing, its own entrance off the garden turn, and a smoking garden rather than a smoking corner.
THE BAR — INK WALLS, BRASS LIGHT
THE COUNTER — THE THEATRE, CAST IN CEDAR AND ICE
III · THE TABLE
Six kitchens on one menu.
Bowl food, sushi, noodles, robata, tempura and the teppan — a menu wide enough for every palate at the table, disciplined enough to stay Japanese.
Cold, first
Tea-smoked scallop carpaccio with yuzu sorbet and shiso oil · tuna pizza with avocado, jalapeño, truffle aioli and 24-carat gold · maguro and hamachi tartare under caviar and crisped wild rice · sashimi salad with crab-stick tempura.
Hot, close behind
Prawn tempura with spicy mayo and citrus ponzu · pork belly in fruit soy · white asparagus with stewed tomato, whole garlic and yuzu soy · harumaki two ways.
The sushi bar
Maki from California to the OMG roll; nigiri and sashimi by the pair — bluefin, salmon, hamachi, octopus, unagi, sweet raw prawn — and the chef's platter of sixteen for the committed.
The teppan
Corn-fed chicken, Chilean sea bass, New Zealand lamb chops; garlic fried rice, yaki soba and yaki udon — seafood, chicken or the garden's own.
IV · THE BAR
Sake first; the rest follow.
The cellar reads east: sake by temperature and prefecture, Japanese single malts, shochu for the initiated — and a cocktail list with an Asian accent, drawn from the house's own bar book. A female-led bar team is written into the staffing plan deliberately: the room's hospitality should feel composed, not performed.
THE MIXOLOGY COMPENDIUM →V · THE MARKET
Positioned before it is furnished.
The concept was tested on the house's frameworks — the five Cs, the positioning statement — before a single chair was priced.
THE CLAIM
Lutyens' Delhi's izakaya — world-class Japanese dining and innovative mixology at pricing the competition cannot politely match, on the most central luxury address in the city.
THE COMPANY IT KEEPS
The competitive set is the city's luxury-hotel bar royalty — Rick's, Grappa, the Polo Lounge. The differentiation is the counter: none of them cook in front of the guest.
THE GUEST
Embassies and the PSU corridor; HNIs and the CXO floor; the working lunch; and the generation that prefers a lounge to a club — seekers of fine food and fine pours who will not negotiate on quality.
THE ALLIES
Key influencers, beverage critics and premium spirit houses — the launch is a courtship of the people who tell the city where to drink.
VI · THE NUMBERS
A conversion, not a construction.
The concept converts an existing bar — the counter moves in, the walls stay. Indicative capital below; figures are of their time and re-verified against the live model before any decision.
LINE
INDICATIVE (₹)
Sushi counter & kitchen line — display, chillers, −60° freezer, teppan grill, salamander, fryer
11,50,000
China, crockery & glass
4,00,000
Bar menu authorship & consultancy
4,00,000
Ice machine · glass washer · bar equipment
4,50,000
Kimono & hakama — the room dressed as the menu is written
60,000
Indicative capital, before interiors
24,60,000
STAFFING: A JAPANESE MASTER CHEF, CDP AND TWO COMMIS · BAR MANAGER, SUPERVISOR, BARTENDER · THREE STEWARDS. INTERIORS PER THE PROJECT TEAM'S ESTIMATE.
“The menu is the argument; the accounts are the verdict.”
Read next