Nico-Caara is a café embedded within Nicobar’s flagship store at The Chanakya, New Delhi. Designed as a natural extension of the retail environment, the café blurs boundaries between shopping and dining. The interiors extend Nicobar’s tropical-modern vocabulary with cane, timber, and terrazzo, while Caara’s kitchen brings craft and freshness to the menu. The result is a seamless hybrid where food, fashion, and lifestyle converge.
An open, garden-like café embedded within the architecture of retail
Nico Caara
Caara
Chanakya, New Delhi
2019
Built Up : 1,290 sq ft
PROJECT OVERVIEW
A lush dining interior where hanging planters, filtered daylight, and tactile finishes create a relaxed yet layered spatial experience.
Design Intent
The café draws from a tropical Indian design language—layered, tactile, and relaxed—while remaining precise and considered. The intention was to create a space that feels garden-like and open, yet anchored by craft and material depth.
An open kitchen and integrated bar sit at the heart of the café, making preparation and making visible. Food becomes part of the spatial experience rather than something hidden behind the scenes.
Experience & Flow
Entry into Nico-Caara is choreographed through shelving lined with ingredients and jars of specialty foods—setting the tone before one even sits down. Seating is deliberately varied: communal tables encourage shared moments, while quieter nooks allow visitors to slow down at their own pace.
The café functions as a pause within the retail journey—a place to sit, observe, eat, and return to browsing without a hard boundary between the two.
Nico-Caara is light-filled, tropical, and tactile. It transforms shopping into a richer cultural activity, where food, design, and everyday rituals overlap. The café doesn’t compete with the store—it completes it.
FIG (O1)
Timber
Wooden elements infuse the interior with warmth and grain, tempering industrial forms while anchoring the dining experience in familiarity.
FIG (O2)
Tile
The monochromatic black and white patterned tiles add a neutral base for the dark themed interiors. Through colour and geometry it forms a clear distinction between the cafeteria and retail section.
