Talk about spicy humor. A soon-to-open Tallahassee restaurant feasts on it – spicy-food humor, that is.
The Pensacola Street restaurant’s website features a video clip of a popular TV character gagging on a meal in an Indian restaurant.
Twenty-something entrepreneur Tarun Gupta finds the clip hysterical – and a tangy way to promote his unique new eatery.
Gupta says he’s poised to open Naantheless, an Indian fast-food restaurant that features a play on words in its name, a playful spirit in its approach and a winking elephant in its logo.
“We figure we never want to get into a place where we’re taking ourselves too seriously,” he said. “I would hate to get all ‘corporatey’ and serious.”
But he gets serious when he must: Gupta says he wanted to open in April but held off because of the coronavirus pandemic. He says he hopes to start offering delivery and carryout at the end of August.
“We’re leaving a ton of money on the table to be extra cautious and protect the community,” Gupta said.
With simple a la carte items for as little as $2 or $3, he targets college students and young professionals with a taste for a quick, hard-to-get bite.
Gupta sees it as Indian street food, Americanized, even in the names of the dishes. Chole Chaat becomes Chickpea Salad. Bhelpuri becomes Crispy Rice Bowl. Dabeli becomes Sloppy Akash – “India’s take on the Sloppy Joe,” according to the menu.
Samosas – India’s “signature street food” – remain samosas. In a twist of its name and an Indian flatbread staple, Naantheless also plans to offer “Naan-traditional Pizza,” plus dessert, snacks and beer.
Gupta calls the playful animal in his logo “Akash, the friendly elephant” and plans to feature the pachyderm parody in goofy artwork inside and outside the restaurant.
Anything to make people laugh, he says.
He fondly recalls encountering food carts on the streets of northern India before his family immigrated to Tallahassee in 1998, when he was 4 ½.
“I don’t think Indian food is as mainstream as Mexican, Italian or even Chinese,” he said. “So that was one of my goals. I wanted to help make Indian food more mainstream and accessible.”
Gupta, a Rickards High graduate, says the idea emerged in 2015 when he was studying business administration at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He and friends were eating at a Taco Bell and longing for a Taco Bell-style Indian restaurant.
“There’s a fast food chain for almost every cuisine,” he said. “There’s everything except Indian food. It just didn’t make sense to us.”
After earning his degree in 2016, he says, he moved to Silicon Valley, worked in education consulting and explored the idea of an Indian fast-food restaurant chain.
People there told him he had a great idea, he says, and a friend there came up with the name Naantheless.
Gupta quit his job in the middle of last year to return to Tallahassee and begin, using money he had saved, the months-long process of starting a business, with a goal of expanding.
In late January, he says, he signed a lease for a 1,600-square-foot space at 2020 W. Pensacola St., a shopping center near Florida State University.
Gupta recruited his father to help him renovate the unit, which previously housed a pizza chain. They spent weeks scraping and scrubbing, ripping up tile and floors, covering worn countertops and installing faux-brick-wall panels. They also assembled do-it-yourself seats and tables, and they mounted a big-screen TV.
“Just me and my dad,” Gupta said. “I’ve always been very frugal, just growing up in an Indian family and the values that my parents forced me to have … I think you can do more with less money. You just have to be a little creative.”
You also need a partner. As he worked on his lease, he says, he convinced one of his best friends from college to join him as a co-founder.
Drew Rudolph says he found himself skeptical and took months to consider quitting his job in North Carolina and moving to Tallahassee. The “idea itself” finally convinced him, he says.
“It’s just not something that’s out there,” he said of Indian fast food.
Rudolph moved here in March, just as the pandemic hit and prompted the closure of restaurants and other businesses. The co-founders decided to postpone their launch indefinitely, which Gupta says inspired negative online feedback about his restaurant before it even opened.
“It’s just isolated cases, but it’s discouraging to see …,” he said. “Local businesses are trying to open up in the middle of a pandemic, and they’re valuing safety over revenue.”
Gupta says he and Rudolph have ordered all their food ingredients and should be ready to go perhaps within a week or so.
Gupta’s father and fellow renovator, Rajeev, can hardly wait.
“I will try to be his first customer,” he said with a laugh.
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Naantheless wants to bring you Indian fast food with a side of humor - Tallahassee Democrat
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