When Ashish Thadani moved to Chennai in 1999, dining out wasn’t exactly an event. “Going out meant Saravana Bhavan,” he chuckles. The founder and CEO of Ciclo Café, Thadani has watched—and helped—Chennai grow into a city that now confidently orders a salad bowl or a smoothie.
“Locals have really taken a liking to contemporary cuisine these days,” he says, leaning back thoughtfully. “People are willing to experiment. And eat out. Chennai has come a long way.”
He’s not wrong. Today, the city boasts standalone bars, French bistros, cloud kitchens, and pre-wedding shoot hotspots. But it wasn’t always this way.
“Back then, you could count on your fingertips the restaurants you’d go to,” Thadani recalls. The change, he believes, began about a decade ago.
“We opened L’amandier—our first French bistro—in 2013. Honestly, all of this was by default,” he says with a laugh. “I’m not from F&B at all. We just built what we wanted to see in Chennai.”
Ashish moved from Pune to Chennai, but his real entry into the hospitality business was through service apartments. “You needed 20 rooms to get a bar license. So we built a property with 20 rooms just for that. But the liquor license took longer than expected,” he explains. “So we said, okay, let’s open a French bistro while we wait.”
That “bistro while we wait” became a runaway success. “L’amandier did very well,” he says. Later, they added Ciclo Café to the mix, which would soon become a benchmark in the café space in Chennai and Pondicherry.
Despite his success, Ashish remains refreshingly unfiltered. And it’s not just about the food anymore. It’s about the ‘gram.“In today’s world, influencer marketing works. Most cafes rely on it. If your place is Instagrammable and the food is good, that’s enough.”
He admits, “I’m very old school. I’m still learning. Pondy, especially, has a lot of these Instagrammable places. We didn’t even realise Ciclo in Pondicherry was part of a selfie point!”
He bursts out laughing. “People would gather outside, and we’d wonder why. Turns out, if you Google ‘selfie point Pondicherry,’ it literally drops the pin right outside Ciclo.”
From there came the reels, the lighting equipment, the professional pre-wedding shoots. “It’s an everyday ritual,” he says. “Residents have started fencing their footpaths. People still climb over and take pictures with one leg on the wall. You’ll see lighting, outfit changes, even Bollywood-style pre-wedding videos.”
The creator economy may be new to Ashish, but he doesn’t dismiss it. “It’s good for the economy. It’s recession-proof,” he says.
Ashish’s operations today span multiple locations, with central kitchens and chiller vans ensuring consistency across outlets. “We set up a central bakery and kitchen during the lockdown. Everything—like patties—goes from there to Pondy.”
Ciclo has four outlets now. “We got our liquor license in 2016. Changed L’amandier into a bar—it made commercial sense,” he says.
But it’s not about just building more. The vision is sharper now. “We’re opening a new restaurant. It’s going to be very different from what we’ve done before. We’ve got a young chef. We’re excited about that.”
Talking about keeping the heritage aspect of the architecture at Ciclo Pondicherry intact, he says, “For our Pondy property, we worked with INTACH to retain the French heritage. Varuna, from Chennai, has done almost all our interiors. She gives it that colour, that identity.”
Reflecting on what’s next, he smiles. “It’s all changing. Slowly. But it’s changing.”
