Indian restaurant Cheeni has landed a deal as the first tenant for the Horseshoe Office and Retail area of Research Triangle Park‘s large Hub RTP development in Durham.
Preeti Waas first opened Cheeni as a cafe in Raleigh before opening a full-service restaurant in downtown Durham in 2023. Cheeni is known for its traditional Indian cuisine, with menu items like samosas, chaat and puri.
The original Raleigh location is now closed, so the new expansion to Hub RTP will be the second location for Cheeni at the moment.
The up-and-coming Horseshoe development features 120,000 square feet of office space as well as more than 35,000 square feet of retail and restaurant areas. Cheeni will be the first restaurant to sign a lease for a spot in the development.
Waas is looking forward to joining the expansion at Research Triangle Park (RTP), which houses many agencies and science and technology companies.
“When you think about innovation, you think about RTP. Raleigh and Durham were not on the national consciousness until Research Triangle Park put them on the map. It attracted a whole lot of masterminds from all over the world,” Waas said. “To be in the middle of all that and serve that caliber of people and palettes from all around the world [will be great].”
Waas said this restaurant will allow them to experiment further with design concepts compared to her past locations, where she had to work within the framework of the existing buildouts.
“This is a wide open canvas for us so we get to design the space from scratch,” Waas said.
Currently, Waas and the Cheeni team are working with architects and filing permits. While the opening timeline is subject to change, they are aiming for an early to mid-2025 opening date.
“Although our cuisine is extremely traditional, I like to think we’re innovative in the way we serve and the kind of restaurant we are,” Waas said. “We aim not to be a traditional restaurant fitting all the traditional stereotypes in the restaurant industry — we aim to break all of those. And what better place to do it than in the heart of innovation?”
