Curry News

Indian street food joins restaurant mix at buzzy new Fort Worth center

Hurry up now for Curry Up Now, coming to Fort Worth.

Photo courtesy of Curry Uo Now

An Indian street food concept is coming to Fort Worth: Curry Up Now, a chain from the West Coast, will open a location in the growing North City development at Alliance in North Fort Worth.

A spokesperson for the center says there's still no street address and it won't open for probably at least another year, since the growing North City development still has to be built. Still, we can all agree that it's never too soon to get excited about Indian food.

Curry Up Now is an Indian fast-casual concept from San Francisco, founded in 2009 as a food truck by husband-and-wife Akash and Rana Kapoor. They've since expanded to three food trucks, plus more than a dozen brick-and-mortar restaurants in Northern and Southern California, Utah, New Jersey, and Georgia.

Their motto is "not your average Indian fare," with fun items such as a tandoori fried chicken sandwich, sweet potato waffle fries with hot & sweet tomato dipping sauce, and fried cheese ravioli with tikka masala dip.

Signature dishes include:

Tikka Masala Burritos
Deconstructed Samosas
Indian-style tacos
Naughty Naan

There is also a section of Indian street food snacks and more traditional dishes like Thali Platters, Kathi Rolls, and Bhel Puri; plus craft cocktails and bar bites.

One of the largest mixed-use developments in the southwest, the North City development is on fire, with other coming-soons that include super-buzzy Portillo's, Snooze an AM Eatery, Velvet Taco, and Kura Revolving Sushi.

Curry Up Now CEO Akash Kapoor acknowledges the specialness of the center, stating, "We couldn’t have asked for a better location and a better team for our next location in the great state of Texas."

The first location in Texas opened at Grandscape in The Colony in 2021. There's also a Curry Up Now presence in Dallas as part of the Kitchen United take-out counter inside the Kroger store at 5665 E. Mockingbird Ln.; however, that is just a commissary kitchen doing Curry Up Now dishes and not anyone actually connected with the concept.

The franchisee bringing Curry Up Now to Fort Worth is Ekam Gourmet Kitchens, LLC, a female-run franchise group led by Samyuktha Kilaru and Kiran Khajuria, who boast more than 25 years of experience in logistics and customer service, including Kilaru’s experience working in the food business.

They've been committed to bringing Curry Up Now to DFW for at least two years, and now finally have the perfect space.

“We’re beyond excited to have found the perfect location to bring this concept to Fort Worth,” Kilaru says. “North City is the kind of development we’d been targeting, and it will be the perfect home to display the dynamic flavors and bright energy that makes Curry Up Now such an exciting experience. The people of Forth Worth are really going to love it.”

openings

Chef News

Fort Worth's Will Rogers Memorial Center welcomes bright new chef

FortWorthtx.gov

Will Rogers Memorial Center

There's a new chef in town: Waylon Cornelius, named executive chef of catering and concessions for Craft Culinary Concepts, the food and beverage provider at Will Rogers Memorial Center.

Will Rogers Memorial Center is the 120-acre entertainment complex anchoring Fort Worth’s Cultural District, owned and operated by the City of Fort Worth. Cornelius will oversee menus for trade shows and other events at the center which bring in more than 2 million visitors a year.

Craft Culinary Concepts is headquartered in Glendale, Arizona, and manages food and beverage programs for entertainment, sports and cultural facilities.

Chef Waylon Corneliusfortworthtx.gov

According to a release, Cornelius joined the team this summer and is already shifting the expectations of guests from a typical “BBQ and beans” menu to a bill of fare satisfying every kind of palate.

“We always have fajitas ready to go, but we also make a beautiful Beef Wellington or baked salmon with a pink salt crust,” Cornelius says in a statement.

For consumer trade shows, Craft and its partners Caribou and Taco Heads offer more choices for the thousands of guests who attend events at WRMC annually.

“Some of our equestrian guests are away from home and here for several days, and they need more than popcorn and hot dogs,” Cornelius says. “Our concessions offer biscuits and gravy, burritos made in-house, strawberry salad, fruit and yogurt cups.”

A native of Mansfield, Cornelius grew up helping in a farm-to-table kitchen. He was raised on a farm with his mother, grandmother, and grandfather -- a Vietnam veteran who enjoyed vegetable gardens and raising hogs and chickens. He studied computer science after high school and holds an associate's degree in Cultural Resource Management and Policy Analysis from Tarrant County College.

He's a 2003 graduate of AIMS Academy of Culinary Arts in Dallas where he was mentored by a number of great chefs. While training as assistant executive sous chef at the AAA four-diamond Grand Hyatt DFW, he worked with Executive Chef Sutti Sripolpa, chef Eric Dreyer (who went on to be Oprah Winfrey’s personal chef), and Chef Jean-Claude Plihon, under whom he honed his French cooking skills.

As executive sous chef at the opening of Perry’s Steakhouse and Grille in Southlake, Cornelius gained expertise with volume. While at HG Sply Co., he learned about gluten-free items and other food allergies.

HG Sply is also where he crossed paths with Chef James R. Schell III, Craft’s general manager at WRMC, who recruited Cornelius to the complex.

"James said he needed someone who can hit moving targets, push the culinary team to be more avant-garde and use locally sourced, seasonal ingredients, so here I am," Cornelius says. "Culinary is a small world."

“I want people to say, ‘When we were in Fort Worth, you won’t believe what we got at Will Rogers!’” Schell says. “Even the celebrities who perform [in the auditorium] are surprised. When Chicago played here recently and we served dinner backstage, they said they felt treated like the Rolling Stones.”

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