Inside the recently-launched Ruby Tuesday restaurant in New Delhi’s Greater Kailash II

Tucking into a portion of the seasoned and slow-baked “hang of the plate” ribs amidst warm, inviting colours. A bite of the Chocolate Tall Cake surrounded with memorabilia, like upended Tiffany-style lamps, baseball and basketball legends on the wall and rock classics setting the tenor…

After the quick-service caravan of the Pizza Huts and the KFCs has tickled the taste buds and carved out a niche, it’s time for Ruby Tuesday, an all-American casual-dining restaurant chain with over 900 outlets worldwide, to come to Calcutta.

Named after the Rolling Stones chartbuster Ruby Tuesday, with the spirit of the Seventies permeating it, the chain will kick off city operations with two restaurants — at South City Mall on Prince Anwar Shah Road and Avani Galleria, on Park Street.

“We are the first international casual dining restaurant chain setting up operations in Calcutta and both our outlets should be operational by the first quarter of the next financial year. We believe there could be room for at least five outlets over the next two years,” Udhishter Khatri, assistant manager, coordination, tells Metro.

“Our goal is to provide diners with wow! food and wow! service in wow! surroundings,” Khatri adds.

Ruby Tuesday is a publicly-owned company traded on the NYSE and is spread all over North America, South America, Europe and Asia.

It launched India operations in 2000 from Delhi’s Connaught Place and now runs over a dozen restaurants in the country.

The restaurant offers “an extravagant salad bar” along with its “mouth-watering delights” — platters, Fajitas, Chimichanga, burgers, pastas, sandwiches and a range of Indian kebabs and curries. Complimenting these is “an elaborate bar” serving a range of Ruby classics, frozen specialities, shooters, classic cocktails and mocktails.

The local F&B trade is excited about the new entrant. “They are a popular chain and should do well in Calcutta, which has responded positively to international brands,” says S.S. Kothari, president, Hotel & Restaurant Association of Eastern India. The buoyancy is echoed by Abhijit Das, regional director, Trammell Crow Meghraj, property consultants handling the Ruby Tuesday account: “The fact that more such brands are waiting to come in underlines the growing interest in Calcutta.”