Who says it’s the karaoke of cooking?  

Photo by Irena Carpaccio 

Prepare it yourself restaurants have been in existence for decades, but the concept of getting folks rewarded for it, is what clinched business for Oku Pandalet, the restaurant chain with attitude.

The attitude is to say cook properly, or suffer gladly others cooking like pros. Want to be Michelin star cook, then come up with some something great. A simple but audacious concept such as this, now we know, was the beginning of a successful global cuisine fad that turned mega standup business success.

Oku Pandalet now has outlets in 30 countries in all continents, and it’s hoping to be the restaurant leader of the world. When it started, Oku Pandalet was the karaoke of the restaurant world.

When this karaoke comparison was suggested to OP founder Sumi Viginalankorn of (guess where?) South East Asian descent, he said he would not shy away from the description. Even though karaoke is a pedestrian brand of music, it never waned in popularity. “So if that’s where our people think OP is going to be stuck, I don’t mind being there at the beginning”, Sumi or SM as he is known in the business world, says.

However, he says Oku Pandalet will will not be the plain vanilla karaoke of the food business for long, because karaoke would remain pedestrian, while OP has become a lifestyle among restaurant goers.

The secret for OP taking off the way it did was that people with ordinary talents, always dreamt that they have potential to become celebrities. So they are constantly trying to become Michelin star chefs trying novel recipes of their own at Oku Pandalet, and some of them hit the jackpot. When some of them hit the jackpot others want to hit the jackpot too, and so the chain became so big that business began to thrive in rather unexpected ways.

For those who have just landed from Mars, the way the chain works is that people who cook up new recipes that are liked by five or more customers at the restaurant at the time the food is served, are rewarded by having their recipes in a contest to be on the OP main menu.

There are many other perks too:

Those who cook up the best recipes, are honed in on by reviewers and food critics who are affiliated to the OP group. Successful cooks can sometimes expect exponential craving for their recipes in places they haven’t even heard of before.

The new recipes cooked up by OP customers have included some that have gone onto create a whole new system of awarding stars for great chefs. Bow out Michelin. That SfP system is a more rigorous and transparent way of grading chefs, and the recipes that have gained traction in the SfP regional delicacy category, are all mostly OP generated recipes.

“We have taken regional cooking and made it globally tasty,’ says  Sumi while digging into a Pandalet favourite, quixotically called the Q-grater. “Now, food and craving are compatible — and that isn’t an embarrassment anymore”, he sighs.