Qualiko Chicken Feast Showcases Versatility, Quality & Scale at Brilliant Gastro

Dipna Anand and her father Gulu put the Qualiko range through its paces at a special Chicken Feast at Brilliant Gastro in Southall, demonstrating how the products can perform across restaurant, contract catering, stadia, street-food and grab-and-go operations.

Qualiko Chicken took centre stage in the purpose-built pergola at Brilliant Gastro by Dipna Anand in Southall on Monday 7 September, as chefs, buyers, butchers and foodservice professionals gathered for a special Qualiko Chicken Feast to showcase the range’s quality, versatility and operational benefits.

Hosted by celebrated chef Dipna Anand and her father Gulu Anand, the event saw Qualiko products transformed into a vibrant selection of dishes inspired by the flavours of the Brilliant kitchen, ably assisted by Level 2 hospitality and catering students from West London College.

Guests were welcomed with chicken canapés before sitting down to a tasting menu featuring hand-folded chicken samosas with mint chutney, tandoori chicken with tamarind chutney and masala fries, achari chicken tikka with kachumber salad, dynamite wings, butter chicken with pilau rice and shawarma on naan, followed by gulab jamun with pistachio.

The dishes demonstrated the breadth of the Qualiko portfolio, using products including steamed cooked skinless boneless thigh meat, shawarma boneless thigh meat, oyster thigh meat, steamed wings, cooked chicken breast fillets and frozen shredded shawarma.

For Dipna and Gulu, however, the exercise went considerably further than simply creating a great-tasting menu. The pair assessed the products through the eyes of experienced high-volume foodservice operators.

Today, the Brilliant business extends far beyond its restaurant operations. Through its collaboration with Compass Group, Brilliant dishes are served at major sporting and entertainment venues, including Chelsea Football Club, Brentford FC, The Kia Oval, Allianz Stadium Twickenham, Harlequins, Edgbaston and The O2.

That makes consistency, speed of service, labour efficiency, portion control and the ability to scale recipes particularly important – precisely the areas in which prepared and portioned chicken products can offer significant operational advantages.

Dipna said:

“Dad and I were genuinely impressed by how well the Qualiko products performed across the dishes. In our business, flavour will always come first, but when we’re producing food at scale in our CPU, we also need consistency, reliability and products that help our chefs work efficiently. Whether we’re cooking for the restaurant, our delivery business or large-volume stadia catering, we need to know we can reproduce the same quality time after time. The Qualiko range gives chefs a versatile starting point while still allowing us to put our own Brilliant flavours and identity into the finished dish.”

The products also demonstrated considerable potential for the Asian foodservice market, where chicken remains an extraordinarily versatile menu ingredient. From tikka, butter chicken and samosas to shawarma, loaded naan breads, wings and handheld dishes, the range lends itself particularly well to contemporary street-food, food-to-go and stadium concepts.

For Gulu Anand, whose hospitality career spans decades, commercial practicality remains as important as flavour.

Gulu said:

“When you have spent your life in restaurants and catering, you know that a product has to work in the kitchen as well as taste good on the plate. You need consistency, you need to control waste, and you need something chefs can work with quickly when the kitchen gets busy. I liked the quality of the Qualiko chicken, and, importantly, it took our marinades and spices extremely well. That makes it very useful for Indian and Asian cooking, where the chicken needs to carry flavour.”

From Brilliant Restaurant to Brilliant Gastro

The setting for the event brought its own remarkable foodservice heritage.

The Brilliant story began in Nairobi in the 1950s, when Bishen Dass Anand founded the original Brilliant Restaurant, blending Punjabi culinary traditions with East African influences. After the family relocated to Britain, his sons, Kewal and Gulu Anand, opened Brilliant Restaurant on Western Road in Southall in 1975.

What began as a small restaurant grew dramatically over the following five decades, becoming a Southall institution with a large restaurant, a banqueting operation and a cookery school. Its reputation spread far beyond West London, with the restaurant featured on Gordon Ramsay’s Ramsay’s Best Restaurant and attracting a distinguished clientele.

After 50 years, the original restaurant closed in April 2025, and the family embarked on its next chapter: Brilliant Gastro by Dipna Anand at Parkside Yards in Southall’s Green Quarter. The new concept blends the Anand family’s Punjabi heritage with a contemporary gastropub format.

That evolution also reflects how dramatically the wider Brilliant business has changed. Restaurant dining now sits alongside outside catering, retail, delivery and high-volume foodservice, making the new Southall operation an ideal environment in which to test products intended for professional kitchens.

A showcase for modern foodservice

The Qualiko Chicken Feast also demonstrated Brilliant Gastro’s potential as a food-industry event and development venue.

With professional kitchen facilities alongside restaurant and event space, the Southall site provides an environment in which manufacturers and suppliers can put products directly into chefs’ hands and demonstrate their performance in commercially relevant dishes.

For the global poultry business MHP Foods, the event provided an opportunity to showcase the Qualiko range not merely as chicken products, but as ingredients that support a range of foodservice formats and cuisines.

The menu was illustrated particularly effectively. One range moved from Indian restaurant classics such as butter chicken and Achari tikka to dynamite wings and shawarma naan – exactly the sort of cross-cultural menu development increasingly seen in stadia, QSR, street-food and grab-and-go environments.

For operators producing hundreds or thousands of portions, that flexibility matters. Products that reduce preparation while delivering predictable yield and consistency can allow development chefs to focus their time on seasoning, sauces, presentation and the final customer experience.

And judging by the response at the Qualiko Chicken Feast, Dipna and Dad certainly found plenty of inspiration for what to do with them and are looking forward to organising supply.

To find out more information or talk to one of the Qualiko team, please email: sales@mhpfood.co.uk

Photography & film by Carlos Farinha @carlosclickuk