Hyderabad: Train restaurant picking up steam in Kukatpally

Kukatpally: A multi-cuisine family restaurant-based on a train theme is gaining popularity by leaps and bounds in Kukatpally. The main reason: It has a miniature locomotive train model made in Germany, which serves food to the tables directly running on tracks in the restaurant.

Besides the innovative train model, the restaurant is also earning fame for tasty Chinese, south and north Indian variety of dishes.

Three engineering graduates K Sarveshwar Rao, V Vinod and K Madhu were fascinated about train travels and trains since childhood. Their fascination led to developing a project on trains during their engineering. Their enthusiasm culminated in the train restaurant serving cuisine within the budget of all classes. They named the concept restaurant 'Platform65' and since its launch in November, the footfalls have increased considerably.

The restaurant welcomes the customers with a beautiful engine art, which is also a selfie point at the restaurant. The seating of the restaurant resembles a double-decked train bogie flamboyantly painted hues of orange and purple with a soothing and classy ambience. The mini tracks spread over the tables help the train reach customers with food. To avoid spilling of food while in motion, it has magnetic support system between bowls, train and track.

The entire system including engine, bogies and track runs on electricity and the interconnecting electrical wires are well covered and plastered into wood interns for safety and protection.

According to the managing director, K Sarveshwar Rao, "Platform 65 is the biggest train track restaurant across India which uses a miniature train to serve its customers. The interiors of the restaurant have been specially designed by artist Kannan to ensure an attractive and cozy ambience of a railway station. And to maintain the quality of food we have hired food executive chefs from Delhi, Bangalore and Vijayawada who have an experience of 10+ years. The quality of food, maintenance and the theme attraction are the main reasons for the success of the restaurant."

Explaining about the seating capacity, General Manager B Srinivas said, "We have 198 seating capacity, in weekdays we get customers twice the seating capacity and on weekends the footfall is four times higher. From biryani to desserts, the restaurant satiates both vegetarian and non-vegetarian customers."

"The engine of the train which serves food is manufactured in Germany and we bought it for Rs 3 lakh and we have five such engines to serve all the 198 seats and has spent a lot on the infrastructure and maintenance but, the restaurant charges are affordable and can be competitive with any 3-star restaurants," he added.

Serving Process

Each table is identified and named as a station with different names from Jaipur, Vijayawada, Kanpur, Trivandurum and 10 others. Each station is divided into 3 parts. As such, Jaipur is divided into J1, J2 and J3.

When the order is made on Jaipur table two, we select the J2 button and leave the engine served with food to the table. The train loaded with food directly reaches to the Jaipur station table two along the track.