If you’ve eaten a thin-crust pizza in Chennai any time in the last decade, chances are that you have heard of Ox and Tomato and wondered what happened to it.
The answer is not a comeback. It is Secret Sauce, a new venture from Sandesh Reddy, soft-launching this weekend before opening fully on Monday in Alwarpet, in the space that used to house Finale Dessert Bar.
Mansi, who ran Ox and Tomato for years and is Sandesh’s partner both in business and marriage, did consider reviving that nostalgia for years. “Ox and Tomato saw people who’d walk in everyday to split a meal or just grab and go. People in the neighbourhood had their own favourite items on the menu. I made many friends through the project,” she says.
The two, who have worked together on a menu for the first time, say that it became clear that recreating something from a different era, in a market with so much choice now, was not the best approach. “Trying to recreate an Ox and Tomato in today’s market, when there’s so much option and choices, I didn’t think it was the smartest decision, product-wise. The two of us have come together to work on a menu for the first time. She is the numbers person and asks why the costs are as high,” Sandesh says, laughing. Today, they are looking to point the nostalgia in a different direction.
