Delhi’s food studio opens

Project Otenga has opened in Delhi as a food studio that serves Northeast Indian dishes through curated dining experiences rather than standard restaurant service. (theprint.in) The studio is inside Shaheedi Park on Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg in New Delhi, and founder Kabyashree Borgohain told ThePrint it aims to make “experiential” dining concrete through food, memory and service design. (theprint.in) On its own website, Project Otenga says its dine-in menu is “chef-led,” “ingredient-forward” and built around experimental interpretations of Northeastern Indian flavours. The same site says the Delhi space also hosts multidisciplinary collaborations beyond meals. (projectotenga.com 1) (projectotenga.com 2) The project grew out of a design research exercise, not a conventional hospitality launch. Otenga says Borgohain, who is from Assam, and Dayananda Meitei, who is from Manipur, founded it in 2016 at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad. (theprint.in) (projectotenga.com) Otenga’s own account traces the venture from that 2016 project to a house café in Gandhinagar and then a culture café at Ahmedabad University that ran from 2017 to 2024. The Delhi opening extends that model into a standalone site after years of pop-ups, supper clubs and campus-based work. (projectotenga.com 1) (projectotenga.com 2) The studio describes food as a “behavioral tool” and says its work began with a focus on the mental health and holistic wellbeing of transient urban residents. Its Delhi studio page says it uses food for research, workshops, prototypes and “sensory branding” alongside dining events. (projectotenga.com 1) (projectotenga.com 2) That helps explain why Otenga resists the restaurant label. The company says it treats offerings as prototypes, maps user journeys, role-plays service and builds themed experiences ranging from pop-up dinners to academic workshops. (projectotenga.com) (otengadesigns.com) Its archive lists projects across several cities, including “Body That Eats” in Ahmedabad in 2023, “Tejimola” in Assam in 2023 and “Be a Rasik” in Delhi in 2025. The studio says those events explored eating as choreography, folklore and sensory arrangement rather than only menu execution. (projectotenga.com) The Delhi space also arrives amid wider interest in Northeast Indian food in big-city dining, where chefs and founders are pushing regional cuisines beyond momos-and-thukpa shorthand into tasting menus, storytelling and ingredient-led cooking. Otenga’s pitch is that this can happen inside a slower, design-led format. (projectotenga.com) (theprint.in) For now, the clearest signal from the opening is how Otenga wants to be understood: as a place to eat, but also as a studio that tests how food, space and conversation shape the experience around the table. (projectotenga.com) (projectotenga.com)