From ammonia to food?

Otarian Opens - Vegetarian Fast Food, Carbon Labeled

I was a "hungry vegetarian" Otarian founder Radhika Oswal tells me when I ask why, with no restaurant or food service background at all, she wanted to start a chain of fast food restaurants.

"When I was traveling with my husband I couldn't find anything but french fries and pizza," she goes on to say. "I said to my husband, 'we should start a chain.' Obviously he didn't know I was serious, because he said yes."

And when that yes comes from billionaire Pankaj Oswal, chairman of Burrup Holdings Ltd. in Australia, operator of one of the world's largest ammonia production facilities, you know the financial side of things just got a bit easier.

That all was three years ago, when Radhika began what she now describes as her thesis. "Otarian is my PhD is vegetarianism and sustainability," she jokes.

The product of that research: Two restaurants in New York City (a Bleecker Street location opening April 19th and one near Columbus Circle at 8th Ave and 56th St, opening on the 23rd)...

The menu is lacto-vegetarian with a number of vegan dishes, but Radhika describes the restaurants as going beyond that. This isn't a chain of vegetarian restaurants, but a chain of sustainable restaurants...

I'll be in the city in a few weeks and will have to try this place. Might just try the Tex-Mex "burger." As long as it doesn't smell like ammonia.