Botiwalla

675 Ponce De Leon Ave | Atlanta, GA 30308

Botiwalla is chef Meherwan Irani’s homage to his life long love of kababs and Irani Cafes. In his hometown of Ahmednagar, India, his grandfather owned Sarosh Canteen, the only Irani Cafe in town. Irani Cafes were originally tea and kabab houses run by Parsis - Zoroastrians that emigrated from Persia to India in the late 19th and early 20th century (Meherwan’s great-grandfather Sheriar was one of those eponymous immigrants). With a strange and wonderful mash-up of Victorian decor and Indian sensibilities, they catered to the English colonialists’ love of high tea and afternoon snacks. Even after the British left India, Irani Cafes survived, adapting their menus to Indian tastes, serving a unique style of Indo-Persian (Parsi) cuisine and becoming some of the most iconic and revered dining institutions along the way. 

Chai Pani Asheville

22 Battery Park Ave | Asheville, NC 28801

Chai Pani literally means “tea and water.” It's slang in India for going out for a cup of tea, a tasty bite, a snack, or “a little something.” In Downtown Asheville (and now in Downtown Decatur) it means innovative, fun, affordable and delicious Indian cuisine. We'd go so far as to say it's “mindblasting.”

Some of the best food of any country is its street food, and Chai Pani features chaat - crunchy, spicy, sweet, tangy, brightly flavored Indian street snacks. And because there's nothing more comforting and delicious in any culture than a home cooked meal, Chai Pani also brings you thalis - traditional family meals highlighting India's amazing culinary diversity.

MG Road Lounge

19 Wall St | Asheville, NC 28801

MG Road is the basement bar of Chai Pani, located one floor down, with an entrance on Wall Street in downtown Asheville. Designed to be a great place to get a drink while waiting to be sat at Chai Pani, or a great place to have a big night out with some close friends dancing under a complete canopy of electric Bollywood wonderland. MG Road prides itself on getting on the weirder side of Indian culture and on the best side of contemporary cocktails.

Buxton Hall Barbecue

32 Banks Ave | Asheville, NC 28801

It would be difficult to find business partners with backgrounds more different than Elliott Moss and Meherwan Irani. Their partnership hinges on the passion that food invokes: the history it recalls, the techniques it uses, the shared experiences it produces. After meeting at a Blind Pig Supper in 2013, their mutual love of food and Asheville inspired them to team up and open Buxton.

Buxton Hall finally opened in August of 2015, with Moss tending the pits, and Irani bringing his experience as a restauranteur to the operation. Together, they're revitalizing Carolina barbecue history, demonstrating that tradition tastes good. 

Chai Pani Decatur

406 W Ponce de Leon Ave | Decatur, GA 30030

Chai Pani can also mean a small bribe just enough to get a bite to eat. Well at Chai Pani Decatur, you won’t have to bribe us for innovative, fun, affordable and delicious Indian cuisine.

Some of the most tasty, fun and affordable food of any country is its street food and Chai Pani features chaat – crunchy, spicy, sweet, tangy, brightly flavored Indian street snacks. And since there is nothing more comforting and delicious in any culture than a home cooked meal, Chai Pani also brings you thalis – traditional family meals highlighting India’s amazing culinary diversity.

Hop in a rickshaw, your home away from home awaits.

Spicewalla 

829 Riverside Drive Asheville, NC 28801

Spicewalla is our brand new spice company just down the road from Chai Pani in Asheville. The sourcing, selection, and blending process is personally curated by the master of spices himself, Meherwan Irani, along with his culinary team led by chef de cuisine, James Grogan. Spicewalla has been featured in Food & Wine Magazine, Star Chefs Magazine, Asheville Citizen Times, Edible Asheville, Southern Living, among others. Spicewalla can be found in the kitchens of award winning chefs throughout the country.

H A P P E N I N G S

From fundraisers and film screenings, to festivals and exclusive events, we've always got something exciting and fun going on. 

Click the links below to check out all of the happenings going on each restaurant.

ABOUT US

Food. We like it. Drinks? Oh yeah.

Get the latest news and updates from our restaurants by following @chaipani, @mgroadlounge,
@chaipanidecatur, @botiwalla, and @buxtonhall on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

PRESS

Want to know more about us? Who better to ask than the critics. Check out who's been eating where by going to our Press pages:

CREATIVE

At Chai Pani Restaurant Group, we're about more than just the food. We believe in the power of storytelling, of giving our customers more than just a taste of a Vada Pav or South Carolina Hash– we want to transport you to ground zero, show you that part of our childhoods and ancestries.

We do it in small ways, the way we design our menus or layout our spaces, but we go even further. Sometimes stories need more than just one vehicle, and we use our design, social media, and video editing prowess to take these stories and bring them to fruition.

THAT TIME WE HAD TO MAKE AN EPIC COMMERCIAL FOR BOTIWALLA ...

There's nothing like the taste of Botiwalla, to refresh you and give you the strength to face the day. Rejuvenate yourself with Botiwalla shakti! A special ad film from director Daniel Files. Starring Michael Files, Nargis Aniston, and Davyon St.Usaire Special thanks to cinematographer and general hero Eric Barnes for all his help in helping this grand vision come to life.

THEN THERE'S THAT TIME WHERE WE REVEALED CHAI PANI'S "LITTLE SECRET" ...

A GLIMPSE INTO THE MISSION THAT DRIVES CHAI PANI ...

chai pani giving

In July, 2018, Chai Pani Restaurant Group made a long-term commitment to financially support two students in India: Dipali Kadam and Anu Madival. In partnership with the non-profit Dharavi Diary, Chai Pani will offer full university scholarships for girls that cover room and board, transportation costs, university fees, and tutoring.

This partnership came to be through our friends Jennifer MacDonald and Vanessa Bell, who run the Asheville based non-profit HADAYA, a grass-roots organization dedicated to helping refugees and at-risk youth build a better future through the power of books and play.

Chai Pani has been connected to HADAYA for many years, through give-back nights they’ve held at Chai Pani, and other fundraising initiatives. Earlier this year, HADAYA approached us to take on their scholarship commitment to Dipali and Anu, as they refocus their organization, and we couldn’t be more excited.

In fact, Charlotte Stack, our Director of Operations, and Molly Milroy, our Media and Communications Director, had the opportunity to go to Dharavi and meet Nawneet Ranjan, who run the Dharavi Diary non-profit, as well as meet Anu, one of the students who we are now supporting. 

Here's a snippet from their experience in Dharavi: 

“When Charlotte and I walked into the Dharavi slum, we were astounded and saddened. Imagining trying to navigate life in the slum, especially as a child, was heartbreaking.

When we met with Anu, one of the students we support, we talked to her about growing up in in the Dharavi slum. We learned how impossible it is to get ahead, how poverty is cyclical and generational, and how access to education is nearly impossible after a certain age. 50% of girls in India are married before the age of 18, and only 15% of females are employed in the workforce due to lack of qualifications or proper training.

Education is truly the key to independence and long-term security.

When we walked from the Dharavi slum into the Dharavi Diary center, the energy completely shifted. Instead of the intense atmosphere of the slum, it suddenly felt supportive, comforting, and safe. Students were deep in their studies sitting with their tutors. Older kids were helping younger kids figure out math problems. Kids were chatting with us about their next soccer match they were attending with Nawneet. Kids were learning coding and designing auto-cad and apps on donated computers. They were proud, happy, and thriving. You could tell that this was a good thing happening in the midst of the Dharavi slum. The biggest thing that we could sense is that these kids now have the support, encouragement and means to positively alter the trajectory of their lives.

They’ve seen generation upon generation of their families stuck in one place. But because of Nawneet, Dharavi Diary, and Chai Pani, educational opportunities, support, and encouragement are all now within an arm's reach."

Click on the video below to learn more. If you're interested in hosting a fundraising event, supporting additional students, or have other questions please email mollymilroy@chaipani.net. 

Ansuja, Dipali and Roshani share their impact story. Video credit: Nawneet Ranjan.

OUR TEAM

MEHERWAN IRANI
Executive Chef, Chief Chaiwalla & Founder

In 2009, Irani quit his day job in sales to open his first restaurant– Chai Pani, a unique Indian street food joint in downtown Asheville. Whether it was a midlife crisis or a stroke of genius is debatable. In any case, the self-taught chef has now opened his fifth place, with more on the way. With three James Beard Award nominations for Best Chef in the Southeast under his belt, he's finally confident this might be working out. His restaurants have been written up in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, GQ, Food & Wine, Men's Health, USA Today, and Bon Appétit, among others. Not bad for a former salesman. He accredits his business success to the amazing people he works with each day, including his business partner and wife, Molly.

MICHAEL FILES
Brand Director

Michael made a life for himself eagerly traveling all over the world before finally being convinced to stay in one place for more than a year– by helping open a little restaurant called Chai Pani. He initially joined up with Meherwan and Molly Irani in 2009 under the guise of finalizing a logo for Chai Pani, and has since gone on to do every job there is in the restaurant business, even helping to open every restaurant in the Chai Pani Restaurant Group. Having worked at a top contemporary art gallery in Mumbai, Michael has a long-standing deep love and connection to India that comes through in his design of the Chai Pani spaces. His work also focuses on communicating the mission of bringing Indian street food to the US audience, very often through various forms of art and video that seek to capture that unique and irreverent Indian spirit.

KADY BROTHERTON
Financial Director

Kady formally joined the Chai Pani team in 2015, but has been a part of the family for quite some time. Since coming on board, Kady has been hugely instrumental in helping the group to expand and keep an unfathomable amount of balls successfully juggled in the air at any given time. Kady originally comes from sunny Florida, but has since grown quite fond of her adopted mountain town of Asheville. She lives in a quaint but chic house in the country that she renovated with her boyfriend James (pictured below). Together they enjoy Blue Ridge mountain sunsets, gardening, their two dog-children, a couple of horse neigh-bors, and a glass of bubbly or two. 

JAMES GROGAN
Spicewalla Operations Director 

James first fell in love with cooking when he moved to Boone, NC to study accounting at ASU. He found himself with a job at a little family restaurant named Pepper's. He was so hooked that he changed careers and the trajectory of his life. From there he got a job as a dishwasher at the fine dining Crestwood restaurant, and within two years worked his way up to sous chef. In Asheville, fate and Chai Pani's good fortune landed him in 20 hours of interviews for the soon to open restaurant. He was finally hired as one of only 4 kitchen members. Now, as the Chef de Cuisine, he oversees a staff of 20. Since the Cutting Chai trip, he continued to venture to India on his own to keep his street food chops up. And, more importantly, he still loves waking up at 7am to cook daal.

CONTACT US

Our offices are located at 26 Battery Park Avenue, suite 22. If you would like to visit us, but cannot find us, feel welcome to inquire with a representative at our restaurant next door, Chai Pani.

Looking for employment opportunities? Visit our JOBS PAGE, where you can find applications to our restaurants.

Brown in the south

Brown in the South is a new series of collaborative dinners featuring celebrated indian chefs, Meherwan Irani, Vishwesh Bhatt, Maneet Chauhan, Asha Gomez, and Cheetie Kumar, all who live and cook in the American South. 

The very first one was held at Chai Pani Decatur on January 14th, 2018. Check out our snaps from the night here. 

We've vowed to continue these dinners all over the Southeast, and we're keeping that promise to ya. 

To stay up to date on future Brown in the South events, fill out the form below, and we'll keep you posted. 

Read the Atlanta Magazine article about the first Brown in the South event here.