A new CT restaurant is combining Indian and Mexican flavors. Think organic, non-GMO

It’s not your grandmother’s restaurant.

Blue Chip-Indian Eats, an Indian-Mexican fusion restaurant that recently opened in Rocky Hill, doesn’t have ornate decor or paintings depicting scenes of India on the walls.

Unlike many Indian restaurants there’s also steak on the menu and most of the food isn’t super spicy, unless you want it that way.

The restaurant uses a Mexican grille model, think Chipotle, for serving it’s bowls and platters with rice and classic Indian dishes in masala sauces.

There’s even a Mexican taste twist with toppings offered of guacamole, corn, salsa and sour cream.

The owners call it “Indian food Mexican style.”

Their fruits and vegetables are organic, locally sourced when possible, and non-GMO, the owners said. The meats are ethically sourced and free of hormones and antibiotics, the owners said.

Welcome to a modern-style Indian-Mexican fusion restaurant at 154 New Britain Ave. that the owners believe to be a first of its kind in Connecticut.

“We’re going to be serving food here that’s the best of its kind,” hence the name Blue Chip, said co-owner Krishna Seenivasan.

Or as his business partner, Priya Sagala, puts it, “If we don’t want to eat it we don’t give it to the customers.”

Seenivasan, 36, and Sagala, 32, are longtime friends who were raised in India, and in 2015 separately came to the United States, where they first met.

The pair had a few other restaurants together before the pandemic, including a pizza restaurant, but said they have since sold them.

Their latest business venture has been months in the planning from the concept, taste-testing and menu creation.

The pair will be hands-on in the kitchen cooking their “from scratch” dishes with timing that assures their dishes are always fresh, they said.

Their menu includes pre-curated bowls or design your own, as well as platters offering one of three kinds of rice and two proteins.

The pair has seen elsewhere how Mexican toppings can combine nicely with Indian food and decided to make it part of their plan after Sagala tried it at home with good taste results.

Seenivasan said they decided to call the restaurant Blue Chip “because we’re keeping the name as neutral as possible,” so they attract more than just an Indian crowd. The words are perfect because they denote the best, he said.

The words “Indian Eats” is a tagline, they said.

While it’s set up to be grab and go like a Chipotle, the restaurant also has a bright, modern dining room.

“Here we are building modern Indian food, and we wanted it to look different than any other Indian restaurants,” Sagala said.

Seenivasan added, “We didn’t want the place to be gloomy and cluttered.”

Sagala, an artist, has embellished the walls with her Doodle art and painted trees with branches listing menu offerings.

“I just want people to come inside and have the best of everything,” Sagala said. “It’s kind of like therapy looking at the art I put on the walls.”

Another unique aspect of Blue Chip is that they adjusted the spiciness of the marinades and seasonings so they’re less hot and appeal to more people. But super spicy is still available.

Unlike traditional Indian restaurants they also carry steak made with Indian flavors.

The restaurant doesn’t carry any carbonated beverages, but rather fresh fruit smoothies and fresh squeezed juice like on streets of India, including flavors of orange, watermelon, pineapple, sugar cane.

“The good thing is anyone who comes into the restaurant can sample ” whatever they want,” Sagala said.

Neither Seenivasan nor Sagala set out to be chefs, but they became cooking experts by necessity of circumstance, learning on the job.

For this endeavor, they worked for months on a base recipe tweaking the texture and spices to get the taste just right.

Seenivasan said that during COVID when it was hard to hire chefs, he learned the job.

“Before that I had no idea,” how to cook, he said. “It turned out I could really cook some good stuff.”

Sagala has been cooking at home since young adulthood so she had experience.

She said that while she didn’t learn to cook from her mom, she knew the taste of mom’s food and aims for that.

“I do enjoy cooking,” Sagala said.

Sagala said she’s looking forward to meeting “so many friends” in the business and “feeding them is the best thing.”

Seenivasan said there’s “no better feeling” than making people feel “happy and fulfilled through food.”

“This is just not the fastest food, but it’s the healthiest food they can find,” he said.

Sagala said, “taking the business to the next level was Krishna’s idea.”

They are starting by being open six days a week from 11 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. The restaurant is closed on Tuesdays.