Asian restaurants in India often carry a specific set of clichés: dark red and gold interiors, dragon motifs, Ming vases, and names that follow a predictable pattern. The brief was to create something that felt genuinely warm and contemporary, rather than reaching for the familiar shorthand of "Indo-Chinese" restaurant culture.

I led a collaborative workshop with the client, strategists, and designers. The room was filled with a wide range of visual stimuli covering different interpretations of "Asian" - food cultures, street markets, design references, typographic styles - deliberately broad enough to surface unexpected associations and challenge assumptions about what the brand could be.

The stimuli served as a catalyst for two things: first, establishing a set of shared principles for what the name and identity should and shouldn't do; and second, generating a long list of name candidates against those principles. From that process, Hong's Kitchen emerged as the chosen name.