“I detest cabbage.” You can sense the disdain in Sankesh Mehta’s voice as he spits out the words. “But, I love Asian food,” he adds with a half-smile. “Yup, I’d eat a wok or two a week when I lived in Mumbai,” Aakash Shah, partner at the newly opened The Wox Box Co chimes in. Hence the duo’s pet project, this tiny takeaway joint which opened four months ago and already has Chennai engulfed in a whirlwind of customisable woks and baos.
With the idea sizzling away for over two years, the two friends and marketing men moved back to the city and found one thing missing: customisable Pan-Asian food.
“Chennai has some great places for this cuisine, but nothing that involved make-your-own items. But in Mumbai, type in ‘wok’ and 20 places pop up within a five-kilometre radius,” Shah explains. So the pair set out to create something they say “Chennai hasn’t seen.” As we walk into the store, which is tucked away off of Old Mahabalipuram Road (OMR), we see why: it’s customisable, delivery-only Asian food.
The flavours, we find, exceed expectations. While the rice and noodles are personalised mixes-and-matches of bases, sauces, vegetarian proteins — yes, the restaurant is vegetarian-only — and an assortment of the fresh vegetables, the baos come in pre-set combinations. The combinations keep us excited and while some fail to hit the mark. The Shifu Secret sauce-laced hakka noodles are especially addictive. “Sorry, we can’t tell you why,” Shah smiles when we ask. “It’s our little secret.”
The baos are equally sumptuous. Nestled away in two slots of a cardboard box, the sesame-orange fried tofu has even my non-vegetarian dining companions salivating and while we chat, they munch away at the crunchy barbecue mushrooms laced with a chipotle-infused dressing. “We know, the all-vegetarian concept is a little unconventional. But since both of us have grown up in Gujarati households, we know the potential of vegetarian food. We wanted to play around with it,” Mehta explains. And play, they have. The lemongrass iced tea, ginger lemonade, and tender coconut cooler are slightly whimsical, slightly familiar, and perfect for the sultry Chennai evening.
There’s no dessert at the moment, though we’re told that’s one of the developments the partners hope to bring about in the upcoming year. “We have some plans — more baos, for one, along with a set menu, another franchise in the city, and dessert baos. But we want to take it slow,” Shah says.
