Author: By Madalyn Blair – Intern, Cincinnati Business Courier
A new restaurant is moving into the former Revolution Rotisserie space in Cincinnati’s Pleasant Ridge neighborhood.
Ziqr Progressive Indian Restaurant has signed a five-year lease, with a five-year renewal option, for a 5,160-square-foot restaurant and bar space at 6063 Montgomery Road in Pleasant Ridge. The lease rate per square foot was not disclosed.
The restaurant is slated to open by October of this year, but an exact date has not been set.
Dipan Kang, one of the owners of the restaurant alongside his sister and her husband, has been involved in the restaurant industry for almost the last decade. Kang and his parents are the owners of Kanak India in Montgomery and Tandoori Crust Pizza in Fairborn. They also co-own Flame India in West Chester Township with another family.
Kang explained that Ziqr is going to have a twist. While still maintaining the same flavors of typical dishes, he said entrees will be prepared differently.
“We always wanted to do something different with the Indian cuisine, because we always see there’s another Indian restaurant that opens every month in the area and they’re all the same,” Kang said. “People don’t get to taste that good flavor in something different, so we are trying different dishes.”
One spin-off dish at Ziqr is its buttered chicken. While the sauce remains traditional, the chicken will be cooked in the naan bread, which is typically ordered separately to scoop the sauce. Ziqr will also offer Indian-fusion brunch items, including French toast with gulab jamun – an Indian dessert – and omelets.
“I think what he’s trying to do is very different,” Nick Pesola, senior adviser at 3CRE, told me. “I don’t even think there’s anything in the city that is doing anything close to this.”
Pesola first worked with Kang when he was purchasing the location for Tandoori Crust Pizza, which opened in May of this year. When Kang presented the idea of a new restaurant, Pesola suggested opening the eatery in Pleasant Ridge.
As the previous owner of Revolution Rotisserie in Pleasant Ridge, which closed in December 2024, Pesola said from his personal experiences, he was confident the neighborhood would respond well to an Indian restaurant and bar.
“I didn’t know much about the Pleasant Ridge community, like how they are close and how engaged they are until we signed the lease,” Kang said. “Our other restaurants, in Montgomery and West Chester and Fairborn, they’re not that community engaged. We’re excited to show people something different and that this (concept) is in Cincinnati.”
Kang plans to spend $150,000-$200,000 on renovations and new kitchen equipment. The front of the restaurant will be redesigned to create a more “Indian setting,” he said. The space has a capacity for around 82 people.
Ziqr will be hiring a new staff of servers, bussers and line cooks, while a manager and a head chef will transfer from one of Kang’s other restaurants.
“They have this multi-generational family business that I think is unique,” Pesola said. “They get the authentic flavors from the traditional Indian cuisine, but they’re repackaging it in this modern style and pushing the envelope a little bit about what Indian cuisine could be. I think that’s going to be something that young people are going to really respond to both inside the community and also outside of Pleasant Ridge.”
