An Indian food company has expanded to open its second restaurant in Reading town centre.
The Chilis Indian food business started in Newbury back in 2010. More than a decade later, the family business opened its first restaurant at The Village mall in Reading in November 2022.
Earlier this year, the company opened their Chilis South Indian and Asian restaurant in the former Bolan Thai eatery that closed last September.
The two Chilis restaurants are located opposite each other, but both have a unique identity, with the first serving Indian and Indo-Chinese cuisine, with the second focused on South Indian and Asian Fusion cuisine.
Krishna Vangala, one of the business owners, said: “They can expect fine dining, it’s a mix of street food, fine dining curries, and Tandoori starters, and you’ve got Asian dishes, noodles and fried rice as well.
“We do our own Chilis brand ice creams, it’s homemade, very special ice creams, you don’t find in many places, there are very special flavours.
“And we do our own cakes and baked products.”
The company won permission to sell alcohol and play recorded music from 9am to 11pm each day from Reading Borough Council’s licensing department last year.
The new restaurant sells a range of alcoholic and soft drinks, including beer, wine, spirits and lassis, Indian filtered coffee and masala tea.
Chilis also opened a convenience store in Caversham in 2023.
Asked what it takes to build an expanding business, Mr Vangala said: “We maintain standards in the quality, that’s what we believe in, and food and taste wise the quality and the unique menu is our strength.
“It’s a family and authentic style of business. It is something unique, these days it’s missing, these days it’s all fast paced and modernised, but these are traditional, sauce-based dishes that we do, that are taken from our forefathers and our families – that’s where we got the recipes from.
“My parents and grandparents were all farmers from Hyderabad in India, we grow chillies at our family farm, and I have learnt everything about farming in 27 years.
“That’s my passion, natural organic food, I love it, that’s why I’ve got into the business.”
His wife, Sravanthi Vangala, is the manager of Chilis South Indian.
Mr Vangala said: “She’s been there since day one, we opened in 2010, so it’s 15 years now. We really love to bring the different towns our food.
“Big companies are based in Newbury. People who visit for business have enjoyed our food; some of them have settled in Reading so they requested us to come to Reading, then we opened there, we got a great response, then they requested South Indian cuisine, so we opened the second one.”
The two Chilis restaurants are located directly opposite each other in The Village.
Explaining the benefits of this arrangement, Mr Vangala said: “We can bring different dishes, we can do requests and bring the separate kitchen.
“We always try to please the customer. After the first restaurant in Reading opened, I used to get a lot of parties, birthdays and corporate bookings.
“We became busy, when people asked for bigger group bookings, we couldn’t do that because places were booked up too much, that was one of the motivations to open next door, then the regular customers can come as well.
“That’s why I opened in the same building.”
