Grilled lamb chops with saffron sauce. Tandoori tacos. Paneer lasagna.
Ingenuity will soon be on the menu in downtown Naperville.
Later this fall, a new restaurant serving Indian fusion cuisine is to open at 220 S. Washington St. The restaurant — called TEMPTINN, a play on “temptation,” owners say — will serve an experimental menu infusing traditional Indian fare with different cuisines and flavors, from Italian to Chinese.
“This is going to be an evolving journey for us,” co-owner Sujay Karvekar said, sitting down for an interview in his nearly finished restaurant Friday. “It’s an evolving menu. It’s new. There’s new flavors. There’s a lot to test and try.”
Karvekar, of Oswego, is opening TEMPTINN with partners Abhin Singla and Anthony Vaz. They hope to start welcoming customers by early November, Karvekar said.
The launch is a long time coming.
Officially, plans to bring TEMPTINN to fruition have been in development for about two years but aspirations to start a restaurant have “been in the works forever,” Karvekar said.
For as long as he can remember, food and cooking has been a passion of his, he said. Growing up in India, he can recall standing beside his mom in the kitchen and just watching.
“I’d always be next to her and learning something new about what she was cooking,” Karvekar said. “You know, just being inquisitive, (asking) what could I do differently.”
He carried that passion with him as he moved to Illinois at age 21 and pursued a career in health care.
“It drove me, certainly, to always have that (inclination) that somewhere down the line, I was going to end up opening a restaurant,” Karvekar said.
Ambition turned tangible when he was struck with a question he just couldn’t shake: how could he employ Indian flavors to create something different from everything else out there?
“I mean, everybody’s palette is different. It’s just amazing how many different cuisines there are,” he said. “If you really want just traditional Indian food, yes, that’s available. You have multiple options. But what can you do differently? I’ve always been a believer of … what can I do differently, and that’s where this idea came from.”
He decided to give the idea a shot. Karvekar joined forces with two people who would ultimately become his business partners and they got to planning — and experimenting.
Before they had any infrastructure, the partners started testing the concept among themselves, Karvekar said. They’d try out different recipes in their own kitchens, just to see what worked and what didn’t.
“When we first were thinking about the restaurant, we literally would toss different flavors. So (we’d take) a classic Italian recipe and a classic Indian recipe and (ask ourselves), ‘How do we blend them together?’” he said.
Sometimes a sauce would be too overpowering. Or maybe the balance between one flavor and the other wouldn’t be quite right. The goal is to land on a dish that maintains the integrity of original recipes while complementing and elevating one another, Karvekar said.
Even in the weeks leading up to TEMPTINN’s opening, Karvekar and his partners have continued to champion learning and change.
Thursday night, TEMPTINN held its sixth of seven tastings planned ahead of opening day. The last is on Monday. Filled out by family, friends and their professional networks, the tastings are a way for them to receive feedback on possible menu items and dish presentations.
“I think it’s been very critical thus far in understanding what would somebody really like to see when it comes to fusion,” Karvekar said.
The hope is to keep growing once doors are open, he said. He imagines a menu that changes “every three months, if not sooner” and offers new recipes to try, he said.
TEMPTINN will be open 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday and 11:30 a.m. to 1 a.m. Friday through Sunday.
Beyond their 4,000-square-foot restaurant, Karvekar and his partners also plan to open an adjoining 2,000-square-foot banquet hall next door sometime in December.
When customers walk in, they can expect “a burst of flavors,” Karvekar said. Prepare to be surprised, he added, and be ready to try something you never thought you would.
“Be brave and come out,” he said. “There’s a lot of options. And I think customers are truly going to enjoy the flavor profiles.”
