Beyond butter chicken in America

It's not curry and it’s not cheap

“Diwali has become a big thing in New York, perhaps because in America you don’t have similar celebrations. Thanksgiving and Christmas is when everyone wants to be home, not in restaurants. But with Americans joining in the feasting during Diwali, restaurants went full and there was a buzz. I have never seen anything like this before,” says top chef Sujan Sarkar, who co-owns five upscale Indian restaurants in the US, including the One Michelin Star Indienne in Chicago, rated as the finest Indian diner in the country, and the uber popular Baar Baar in New York, which has turned eight years old.

Sarkar and two other popular Indian chefs this year cooked an all-sold out Diwali meal at the James Beard House. But they also did staggering, unheard of business at their restaurants during the festive period. Baar Baar, for instance, did 300-400 covers on Diwali. It is not just the very visible festival of consumption that has seen a spurt in consumption at Indian restaurants. “Even otherwise, Indian food at upscale restaurants is getting more popular and more mainstream,” says Sarkar, citing the huge numbers he does even at his uber stylish and expensive Indienne with a tasting menu-only format.

The restaurant does an average of 100-110 covers on weekdays and 125-130 covers on weekends even though its APC of USD 270 (with wine for a nine-course meal) is possibly the highest for any Indian restaurant in the US.  A Michelin Three Star restaurant in comparison can cost between USD 300-350 plus wine. This premiumisation reflects the subverting of the formulaic cheap and cheerful Indian of yore.

One of the toughest restaurants to get a reservation at currently in New York City is Bungalow by celebrity chef Vikas Khanna and restaurateur Jimmy Rizvi (who also owns Gup Shup). Since it opened on March 23 in East Village, it has become one of the most coveted dining spots in the city— prestige reserved earlier for only French, Italian, American and Japanese restaurants. Queues outside the restaurant have been stretching down to First Avenue, and foodies are rivetted by social media posts and videos of various celebrities dining here, and in the process also spotlighting many regional Indian dishes and their nuances. 

Veerays nyc with its Prohibition-era charm features Michelin starred chef Hemant Mathur’s signature grills and curries

Bungalow is a phenomenon that may owe its queues not just to Hyderabadi biryani, shrimp balchao cones, or saffron panna cotta but equally to chef Vikas’ charisma, warmth and an intimate knowledge of New York and its dining scene. “It is not just the food. It is a celebration of Indian culture,” points out chef Sujan Sarkar. In fact, Bungalow is part of an entire community of self-aware and confident Indian restaurants and chefs who are reshaping the image of Indian in America.

“When I first came to New York 30 years ago, Indian food was largely associated with a few key dishes, particularly curry, which simplified rich and diverse regional flavours into a single category. It was considered too rich, heavy and spicy, and had limited visibility,” notes chef Hemant Mathur, one of the finest tandoor chefs in the US, who worked at Devi with chef Suvir Saran (it opened in 2004 and shut in 2007) and Tulsi, which were the first to earn a Michelin star each in New York City.

“Now, Indian food is being recognised for its diversity, is seen as healthy, with its emphasis on fresh vegetables, legumes, and spices with medicinal benefits. It is also elevated now. Earlier, for special occasions, customers used to seek French, American or Italian dining. Now, Indian restaurants with exceptional service and great quality food have become aspirational,” he says.

As of today, there are four Indian restaurants with one Michelin star each in the US. Semma in New York, Indienne in Chicago, Rania in Washington, and Musaafer in Houston. But the Michelin Guide lists as many as 45 Indian restaurants in all, including at least 8-10 new entrants in New York City alone, this year. These include Lungi (NY), Ishq (NY), Kanyakumari (NY), Kebab aur Sharab (NY), Veerays (NY) and Tiya (SF).

“There is a measurable upswing in the familiarity and interest in Indian food as an option in the bigger cities,” say Sharbari Joshi and her daughter Reejuta, who is a second generation Indian-American living in NYC for about a decade. The duo ascribes various reasons to this change—the prizing of plant-based cuisines post Covid, nutritional aspects of spices like ginger and turmeric that Indian chefs are highlighting, and also the emergence of sophisticated Indian restaurants “that have expanded from just casual perhaps also due to fallen real estate prices,” they say.

A view of Baar Baar in Los Angeles with its evolved play on Indian cuisine, like the sweet potato chaat (right)

The interest in high quality Indian food by a mainstream American audience means that top Indian restaurant companies and chefs from both India and the UK, a mature market for Indian food, are looking to add to the league of luxury, high quality diners in the US. UK-based JKS  Restaurants is bringing its acclaimed London restaurant Gymkhana to Vegas and Brigadier’s to New York in 2025. Another marquee opening early next year will be by top chef Regi Mathew opening a small-plates only Kerala food restaurant in NYC.

Also read: Luxury food players bet big on India's appetite for fine things

Starring the Blue Cheese Naan

If the cuisine including broad categories like chaat and cocktails with spices has become elevated, a few star dishes at top Indian restaurants have become aspirational to a larger audience.

Indian Accent New York’s pumpkin shorba along with its blue cheese naan has such resonance and wide recognition that head chef Raveesh Kapoor, who took over the restaurant’s operations in 2022, was recently told by an immigration officer at the airport about how much the latter liked the blue cheese naan at Indian Accent. Kapoor’s newer experiments such as with the Maharashtrian sabudana vada that he cooks like a pancake for Sunday brunches, and with dishes such as waghyu ghee roast are also big successes with an audience that is knowledgeable and open. “Our food has become so popular and loved that we keep getting approached by investors who want to take the restaurant to their cities, to North Carolina, Chicago and Texas”, says Kapoor.

One of the first examples of an Indian dish becoming quite the rage amongst hip NY foodies was in 2021, when the hyper-local Rajasthani Khad Khargosh (whole rabbit cooked in a pit traditionally), became a talking point at what was then one of New York’s “buzziest restaurants”, Dhamaka, by chef Chintan Pandya.

(From left) The widely recognised blue cheese naan and mushroom shorba from Indian Accent New York. Head chef Raveesh Kapoor took over the restaurant’s operations in 2022

The dish took several days’ notice to prepare but after the New York Times’ restaurant critic Pete Wells wrote about how he had twice failed to order “the rabbit”, it became the most aspired to restaurant dish.

Even when chef Sujan Sarkar opened the unique Indian café called Swadeshi in Chicago earlier this year, with dishes like the thatte idli and Indian flavours inspired cakes and bakes, there were queues outside waiting to sample the novelty. 

Social media posts by Indian Americans, who are more prominent culturally and socially in their communities as well as by the new generation of expressive Indian and American-Indian chefs who are not just cooking food closer to their roots but communicating it too, are responsible for this new curiosity around Indian food cultures.

Dilli Dilli, a restaurant that is about to open in New York City, by chef Vipul Gupta, ex-ITC hotels, and chef-restaurateur Gaurav Anand, has been focussing its social media communication on explaining to guests the difference between old Delhi and new Delhi cuisines—one Mughlai, the other Punjabi; a difference that many even in Delhi are unaware of.

The founding team Vipul Gupta, Abla Atoubi and Gaurav Anand of the about to be launched Dilli Dilli in nyc, featuring Dilli Dilli Tikki, their take on a classic Delhi staple. Credit: Evan Sung nyc

The Brown moment

The mainstreaming of Indian food in the US is part of a larger cultural moment as the Indian American community finds more social, cultural and financial prominence. “It has always been a struggle to mix Indian identity with American upbringing but in recent years, media representation by artists such as Lily Singh, Hassan Minaj, Mindy Kaling, Taank Phony have helped. It is a take-off point knowing that the Indian scene is considered hip,” says Reejuta Joshi.

She points out how everything from Sadhguru to Indian music have become mainstreamed too —“think Indo Warehouse at Coachella, the sound of shlokas in yoga classes, Bollywood beats in gyms… these have brought India and Indians closer to the mainstream. We have never seen this kind of Indianness in American space as accepted and celebrated.”

Hanna Raskin, an award-winning food journalist covering the American south, says that possibly, “children of Indian-born parents who came over during the first major immigration wave following a policy change in 1965, are now old enough to have both a culinary worldview worked out and the financial wherewithal to express it”, as a reason for Indian chefs and chef-restaurateurs to find visibility within the larger American community.

“Here, in the south, I am thinking of chefs such as Cheetie Kumar (her restaurant is called Ajja, and she began as a guitarist who started learning recipes while pursuing music) and Vivek Surti (a Vanderbilt University political science graduate turned blogger turned chef at his Nashville restaurant Tailor that celebrates his Gujarati roots), who are doing brilliant work,” Raskin says.

Second generation Indian-Americans aside, it is also the global desis from India who are travelling more and spending more as they champion their Indianness abroad. From film stars like Allu Arjun to Shahrukh Khan and his family, we have been seeing Indian celebrities at Indian restaurants abroad, influencing cultural consumption.

Then, there are the IT entrepreneurs, bankers and investors not to mention affluent Indian students, who are travelling not just for work but for leisure in newer ways—such as to catch the ICC cricket World Cup in New York earlier this year, which by all accounts too saw a big spurt in visibility and business for Indian restaurants in the city. 

If Japanese, Italian and French foods have had their moments, it may be time for a discovery of Indian abroad.