When sambar met caviar

The global culinary map has, of late, been witnessing a proliferation of Indian restaurants offering hyper-regional dishes from the subcontinent. This has sparked fresh interest in the country’s foodscape. It’s a post-Covid phenomenon, points out noted Bengaluru-based chef Manu Chandra.

“While chefs like Vineet Bhatia and Atul Kochhar have been championing Indian food overseas for decades, it is incredible to see the sheer number of restaurants popping up,” he states, adding that the new crop of Indian chefs is more vocal and unabashed about what they do.

The Indian diaspora has become a lot more affluent, and they are seeking luxurious experiences, which include dining on exquisitely created and presented food from their home country. Regional Indian restaurants have been around, but they were unassuming, never premium or upscale. Chandra recalls enjoying a leisurely Bengali meal many years ago at a tiny basement restaurant in New York City, with Padma Lakshmi and Salman Rushdie as his dinner companions.

Medu vadai in Japantown

Amid the many ramen shops and sushi restaurants in San Francisco’s affluent Pacific Heights neighbourhood sits Copra, a restaurant specialising in Kerala and Tamil Nadu cuisine. Located at the intersection of Post and Fillmore Streets, it stands out from the profusion of Japanese restaurants — an elegant, stark white building that simply draws you in with the words ‘Copra’ at the top of its facade. Started by chef Srijith Gopinathan and Ayesha Thapar, a restaurateur, it opened its doors in February 2023.

Just a few buildings away from bowls of miso soup and plates of California rolls, one can tuck into crisp medu vadai — described as a ‘lentil fritter’ and served with vegetable sambar and coconut chutney, or kori gassi, the much-loved Mangalurean chicken dish cooked with byadgi chilli, coconut, tamarind, and paired with Kerala parotta.

Gopinathan and Thapar together run two other restaurants in California — Ettan in Palo Alto and Eylan in Menlo Park. While the former offers eclectic Indian food, the latter prides itself on its wood-fired grilled kebabs. “About 55-60 per cent of our clientele is non-Indian,” shares Gopinathan, who has been living and working in the US for the past 20 years. He has witnessed first-hand the changing perceptions around Indian food. The cuisine is no longer synonymous with butter chicken and ‘naan bread’. “There has been a lot more awareness in recent years,” he notes, adding that the change can be attributed to the growing Indian diaspora.

“Additionally, a lot of Indian chefs, trained professionally, have invested and set up their own restaurants in the US. Earlier too, Indian restaurants were run by Indians, but they were rarely professionally trained,” he points out.

Often, that training finds expression in the plating. Once considered ‘ugly delicious’, chefs are proving that Indian food can look pretty as well. For instance, Copra’s crab dish is served in a silver kadai with a single crisply fried crab topped with pink and purple flowers, shaved greens and artfully placed coriander leaves.

Hyperlocal on the plate

Innovation is at the heart of these menus. While staying true to tradition, they find it necessary to think outside the box and push the envelope. It is not unusual to find hyperlocal ingredients paired with produce that simply does not exist in the Indian culinary vocabulary. At Eylan, which opened in January this year, a bread named ‘Eylan eye’ brings together eggs, truffle, coconut vinaigrette and chives. At Ettan, for 115$ a pop, one can treat oneself to caviar paired with creme fraiche, eggs and kulcha. “Earlier, cuisines like Indian and Thai were considered cheap food. But those days are long gone,” says Gopinathan.

When Vijay Kumar started working as a chef, Indian food was seen as rich, heavy and one-dimensional. In 2021, he opened Semma in New York’s Greenwich Village, a neighbourhood in Manhattan. It specialises in the cuisines of South India. The very next year, it earned a Michelin star. In 2025, The New York Times named it the No. 1 restaurant in that city out of 20,000 others. Kumar says, “People are now curious about hyper-regional dishes, and the real stories behind those dishes. We serve South Indian food the way it’s meant to be — no shortcuts — and guests are embracing it. The appetite for authenticity has grown, and so has the respect for the depth of Indian cuisine.”

While some chefs experiment with unusual flavour pairings and ingredients, Kumar tries to stay true to original recipes — ones that he grew up with. The flavours, he says, are bold, rooted and “almost exactly how they would be served at home.”

“Early on in my career, I felt pressure to tone things down, but I’ve learned that guests respond to honesty. If a dish is made with care and conviction, they’re open to trying it even if it challenges their palate. Authenticity isn’t a barrier anymore; it’s the draw,” he states.

Some of Semma’s most popular dishes are the Gunpowder Dosa and Mattu Iraichi Sukka.

The former is a traditional masala dosa served with sambar, and the latter is a beef fry spiced with black cardamom and Thalasherry peppers. “I think what makes them resonate is the clarity — you taste the fire, the technique, the tradition. There’s nothing watered down or over-explained. It’s real food,” he notes. Diners, he believes, want real experiences, and chefs have stopped adapting to fit in. “Indian chefs are truly showing the diversity of India, from Kerala to Kashmir, and people are realising how vast the cuisine really is,” he elaborates.

Misunderstood cuisine

Due to the efforts of the new wave of chefs who are shining a light on India’s layered regional cuisines, it is finally starting to get the respect it deserves. “But we’re still catching up,” Kumar points out. Cuisines such as Japanese and Thai have had global platforms for longer, with more consistent representation. On the other hand, although Indian food is just as rich and complex, it was misunderstood for a long time. “That’s changing now, and the momentum is strong,” he shares.

Chef Sujan Sarkar opened Indienne in Chicago in 2017 — back when Indian food “had just started gaining recognition for its sophistication and potential to be viewed as an elegant cuisine.” Sarkar, who runs multiple restaurants across the US, highlights the depth of Indian food in his cooking. Apart from becoming a fine dining experience, Indian cuisine is also gaining momentum across all formats — from casual dining to cafes and even pop-ups.

Indienne, which received its first Michelin star in 2023, is sought after for two dishes: First Bite-Pani Puri, and Galouti Éclair. “These dishes are popular because the flavours are still familiar and authentic, but the presentation adds an element of excitement and fun,” he shares. While his other restaurants — Swadesi Cafe, Tiya and Baar Baar — reimagine popular North Indian delicacies, Nadu spotlights Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala food in addition to other cuisines that are yet to be fully explored, such as that of Odisha and West Bengal. “Our benne dosa is the star. It’s the real deal — as close to the benne dosa you would get in Bengaluru.”

Since chef Sameer Taneja took over the reins from Atul Kochhar at Benares in 2019, he has been instrumental in the London restaurant earning back its Michelin star. “I came to England to cook European food. That is what I was trained in. I thought Indian food did not have a future. But I was so wrong,” Taneja shares. Years before joining Benares, he was working with celebrated chef Pierre Koffmann, when the Frenchman asked Taneja to cook something from their menu but with spices. It was not because his French cooking did not pass muster, but because Koffmann believed Taneja had the potential to make history cooking Indian food.

Indian with European techniques

However, chefs like Taneja also find it necessary to incorporate European cooking techniques and ingredients to offer diners something novel. “In the UK, Indian food has been a staple for a long time, but diners are always looking for something new and offbeat. At the same time, the flavours are expected to be authentic. We get questions if they are not. Our British customers are well-travelled and India is a popular tourist destination for Londoners, so they know what Indian food tastes like,” Taneja explains.

Consequently, the spices are not toned down or replaced, but local produce is used, and sometimes, Indian staples are cooked the English way. At Benares, the baked fish biryani is cooked and served as one would a beef Wellington. The fish is deboned, stuffed with quail eggs and basmati rice cooked in fish stock. It is covered with puff pastry, shaped like a fish and baked. “It is also reminiscent of dum biryani,” he adds.

One dish that holds special meaning for Taneja is the oyster and sea bream chaat, which is inspired by his mother. “She is not a great cook, but she is the most hospitable person I have ever met. And she makes the best aam panna,” says Taneja. The cured sea bream and oyster is dressed with tiger milk made from aam panna, and it is served with crunchy boondi, fresh mint and lime zest. It ticks all the flavour boxes — sweet, spicy, umami, sour and bitter.

When Chandra was tasked with helming the kitchen at the India pavilion at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, he wanted to honour his roots but also pay homage to the cuisine of the host country. His take on vada pav — vada in brioche buns — and paniyaram madeleines became instant hits at the festival and went viral on social media. “Innovation is key — one has to be creative,” he reiterates. It is something that some of the greatest Indian restaurants across the globe have in common — be it Tresind Studio in Dubai, Haoma in Bangkok, or Chaat in Hong Kong. Cities like Sydney, Melbourne and even Perth in Australia are big on not just Indian food, but ‘good-looking Indian food’, Chandra says.

Regional cuisines, luxury dining, innovative cooking techniques, unusual flavour pairings — Indian food is definitely witnessing a transformation globally. But Chandra believes it is only the beginning.

A nod to toddy shop cuisine in NY

The latest addition to the list of chefs who are crossing the seas to let international diners know there is more to Indian cuisine than naan and butter chicken is Chef Regi Mathew. Well-known in India for Kappa Chakka Kandhari, which has outlets in Chennai and Bengaluru, Chef Regi has now opened Chatti at New York’s Garment District, a few blocks from Times Square. The name Chatti refers to the traditional clay pot found in Kerala’s toddy shops and homes, and the cuisine too is Chef Regi’s take on toddy shop food — a tradition unique to Kerala but one with a cult following. “I wanted to introduce ‘touchings’ to New Yorkers,” says Chef Regi on a phone call from New York.

He is, of course, talking about the immensely delicious, slow-cooked fresh dishes that typically accompany toddy, a drink made from the sap of coconut or palm trees. These small plates, somewhat akin to the Spanish Tapas platters, contain dishes made of seafood and meat, and are meant for a shared culinary experience. Some of the chef’s signature dishes include prawn pouches, toddy shop beef fry, tender jackfruit cutlets, and the not-to-be-missed ‘Karimeen Pollichathu’ that’s wrapped in banana leaf and grilled. “Chatti is about camaraderie, stories, laughter and the same spirit of community found in toddy shops,” says Chef Regi, adding that the restaurant, despite its minimalist design, channels a similar vibrance in its seating and interiors. Chef Regi believes there will soon be an “explosion of Indian regional cuisine” in America as well as Europe. “I do not want to be left behind; I want to be a part of this impending food revolution,” he says.