A fast-casual Indian restaurant is now dishing out briyani, dosa wraps and more at Tysons Corner Center.
Chopathi India Kitchen quietly opened next to Chipotle on the Nordstrom side of the mall earlier this month after a build-out that took over a year, according to county permits.
The restaurant will get an official grand opening on Monday (July 25), but the soft opening has been a useful transition period, as Chopathi finishes hiring and training employees, says Robert Salzedo, one of the business’ partners.
“Customers give feedback, I ask questions, anything we can improve. I ask how was the food,” Salzedo told FFXnow. “If something’s wrong, we fix it, so the execution’s properly done when we say we’re open to the public.”
This is the sixth location for Chopathi, which launched in 2013 with a stall in the Dulles Town Center food court that has since closed. Loudoun County still has a standalone restaurant in Ashburn, and the business has expanded to Maryland, opening sites in Hanover and Gaithersburg.
Chopathi made its first foray into Fairfax County in 2019 via Chantilly’s Sully Plaza before setting its sights on Tysons. As the D.C. area’s biggest mall, Tysons Corner Center is the “crème of the crème” for restaurants, drawing visitors from across the region and even the world, Salzedo says.
The mall announced that it had added Chopathi as a tenant in June 2021.
In addition to mix-and-match rice bowls and wraps, the menu features briyani bowls, curries, and dosa wraps, a kind of crepe that can be filled with chicken, lamb, fish or paneer and dipped in sauce. There are also desserts and a variety of meat and vegetarian appetizers.
Salzedo says many of the ingredients are imported in bulk from India. The food is stored and cooked at Chopathi’s central kitchen in Chantilly.
“[The owner] is very passionate about the food,” Salzedo said. “…The sauces are sauces you can’t get anywhere. The sauces are what make the flavor, as you can tell, and that sets it apart…the specific spices that he imports that I don’t even know.”
Chopathi has no immediate plans to add other locations, since the business team’s focus for now is on ensuring the Tysons restaurant is successful. Calling word-of-mouth buzz “the best advertising,” Salzedo says it usually takes about a year to tell whether a new location will stick.
“The plan is to be successful,” he said. “We have to execute the perfect meal.”