A new restaurant is planned for the former Sabor Tropical space, 2258 S. Kinnickinnic Ave., in Milwaukee’s Bay View neighborhood.
Chettinadu House, a restaurant specializing in authentic South Indian and Chinese cuisine, could open as early as Dec. 24, owner Ameen Tabassum confirmed.
Tabassum owns two other South Indian/Chinese restaurants in Wisconsin: in Middleton and Waunakee. Those restaurants, named Thalaivar, offer similar menus to what guests will find at Chettinadu House.
“We’re bringing South Indian traditional Kongu Nadu food, which no one has here now,” Tabassum said. “At least 75% of the menu you’ll not find anywhere else in Milwaukee.”
Originally from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, Tabassum lives in New Berlin, and said he had been looking for a Milwaukee-area location for his restaurant for two to three years before he found the space in Bay View. He said the neighborhood’s walkability, popularity and high concentration of restaurants made it the ideal location for Chettinadu House.
Everything is made fresh at the restaurant, and the recipes are all over 50 years old, originally created by Tabassum’s grandfather, who owned restaurants in India.
The diverse menu will have more than 100 items, including multiple varieties of dosa, vegetarian and non-vegetarian curries, biryani, parotta flatbread, tandoori, sambar stew, ragi mudde balls, soups, steamed idli rice cakes, machurian, medu vada fritters, pongal and more. Chinese cuisine includes a variety of fried rice and noodle dishes.
Alcohol will not be served at the restaurant, but guests can order juices, lassi, rose milk, masala chai tea, madras coffee and traditional nannari sharbath, an iced drink made from lemon juice and Indian sarsaparilla.
Chettinadu House will be open daily from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.
The restaurant, with a capacity of 80, will offer dine-in, delivery and catering, plus sidewalk dining from April through September.
Tabassum has made just a few cosmetic changes to the restaurant space, including painting the walls, adding new flooring, bringing in new furniture and adding wall art.
Sabor Tropical – known for its traditional Latin American cuisine and rum bar – had been in the space for six years before its owners decided not to renew the lease due to a significant rent increase, they shared in a February Facebook post.
In the February post, the owners said that Sabor had found a new location that was under construction for remodeling.
They were shooting for a Cinco de Mayo grand opening, though there hasn’t been an update on the business’ Facebook page since that February post.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: New South Indian-Chinese restaurant coming to old Sabor space in Bay View
Reporting by Hannah Kirby and Rachel Bernhard, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
