Not just ice creams and candies, even burgers come in different shades, or so the manager at Barcelos in Khan Market area wants you to believe. After running to full houses when they introduced the black burger, the management decided to experiment further. “It just struck me one fine day. Why not try to bring out the red colourIJ And voila! We did it. And it is a stupendous success,” Rohit Malhotra, who is at the helm of affairs in this South Africa-based chain of eateries, says. He admits, getting the reddish-pink tone to the burger and being able to maintain the health standards was quite a task.
“If black was tough, red was even worse. We had to mix the dough with red beetroot juices. It was a tough call to monitor the changing colour and whether it catered to our strict quality norms. But once we got the concoction right, there was no looking back,” he shares. Malhotra tells us that once the burger has been tried and tested in the Indian markets, it will get rolled out in its global chains. “We are setting a trend of sorts,” he says proudly.
The shades of burger is the talk of town with youngsters flocking into the restaurant to sample burgers with a twist. “They are not coming just for the heck of the colour. It’s our taste that appeals. A bite into the bun and you can feel beetroot in your lips,” he says.
There are many entrepreneurs who want to foray into this shades of junk food business and the going seems to be good.
Tarun Arora who owns a bakery in INA Market tells you that he is working on a coloured croissant made of healthy ingredients. “The food industry is growing at a rapid pace. If we are going to catch up, it has to be through these innovations,” Arora who preferred the Black variant of the burger to the red one, informs.
While the black one is stiff with all ingredients in place, the red one gets to be a little more messy. “That’s exactly how we wanted the burger to be. We want our connoisseurs to get their hands dirty! That is the real fun way of having a burger,” Malhotra says, adding that the restaurant has a few more colourful surprise up their sleeves. “There are things planned but for the moment we want to bask in this glory. Other than this, our molecular cocktails are also creating a buzz,” he says.
You name your alcohol and the mixers will make you a concoction and add all the chemistry into it. “With colourful fumes coming out of every glass, our patrons feel like they have reached heaven and we are happy to improvise,” the owner says. Is there a competition with Nandos which also dishes out grilled chicken as a specialityIJ “I don't think so we can be compared in the same light. There is a lot more variety that Barcelos offers,” Malhotra says.