The Taste by Vir Sanghvi: Indian restaurants shine globally with Michelin stars and authentic flavours

Restaurants such as Semma, Gymkhana, and Jamavar exemplify the rise of authentic Indian cuisine on the global stage, winning Michelin stars.

You have probably heard of Semma, the only Indian restaurant in New York to win a Michelin star. And of Gymkhana, the only Indian restaurant with two Michelin stars in London. Of Jamavar, the only Indian restaurant in the world to have won Michelin stars in three different avatars in three different cities: London, Doha and Dubai.

From London to New York, Indian chefs are redefining global fine dining. (Unsplash)

What, you may well ask, do these restaurants have in common?

There are two answers to this question. The first is the obvious one: they are all Indian restaurants run by chefs who have worked or trained in India. Vijaya Kumar of Semma is very proud of cooking the authentic cuisine of Tamil Nadu’s not-so-elevated castes and makes it hot and spicy. (He started out at the Taj Connemara in Chennai.) His boss, and one of the founders of Unapologetic Foods, which owns Semma, Chef Chintan Pandya, says that the group gets its name from its determination to refuse to apologise for the flavours and oil that characterise Indian food. (Chintan is ex-Oberoi.)

In London, one of the first things that Karam Sethi, the chef-founder of Gymkhana, said to me when I called to congratulate him on Gymkhana’s two stars was “it’s real Indian food, not ‘modern’ Indian.” Gymkhana serves the sort of food Indians actually eat, not a poncy, spice-deprived version. Gymkhana’s Executive Chef Sid Ahuja is ex-Oberoi and Sethi himself trained with ITC.

The most recognisable Indian of the top global restaurants is Jamavar. It was founded by Dinesh Nair, whose family used to own Leela Hotels, and is run by his whiz-kid daughter, Samyukta. The London Jamavar is international in clientele but you will nearly always see a top Indian movie star or cricketer there. This may have something to do with the fact that its chef, Surender Mohan, commands after his years working with the Leela group in India.

Samyukta and Surender took Jamavar to Doha where it became just one of two restaurants to win a Michelin star. (The other restaurant with a star is run by Alain Ducasse.) Next, they opened in Dubai and within a few months of opening, they had a star there too.

I met Surender at the Michelin ceremony in Dubai and was pleased to see that he was one of the few chefs not to be intimidated by the occasion and he gave the longest and best speech of the evening. But then I guess he is now used to attending these events in city after city.

Clearly something new and unusual is happening with Indian food abroad even if we don’t fully understand it here in India. There have been, broadly, four phases with Indian food in the West. The first was the ‘ethnic food’ phase when Indian food became the browner equivalent of chop suey and restaurants served mostly made-up Indian dishes at inexpensive prices.

The second was when Indian food went upmarket but was also Frenchified and plated. In the UK, restaurants serving this kind of food were celebrated and some got Michelin stars. In New York, Floyd Cardoz served two kinds of cuisine. At Tabla, he served a nouvelle take on Indian food and got three stars from the New York Times. But downstairs, at the Bread Bar, the food was more basic and less nouvelle. Even so, the general rule was that if you wanted rave reviews and high-profile rich guests, then you moved away from traditional Indian.

The third phase coincided with a global change in food preferences when French food ceased to be as admired as much. As El Bulli and later, Noma, set the trend, this was reflected in Indian food too. Gaggan Anand worked with the Adria brothers of El Bulli and opened a restaurant in Bangkok that served the kind of Indian food nobody had imagined could exist. Also, in Bangkok, Garima Arora opened Gaa which went on to win two Michelin stars. There was a fair amount of cross-fertilisation. Garima had worked with Rene Redzepi at Noma and with Gaggan. Redzepi himself had worked at El Bulli.

Almost simultaneously, Manish Mehrotra, whose resume included no great restaurants, invented his own version of modern Indian cuisine at Delhi’s Indian Accent. Mehrotra’s background was oriental cuisine so he had no interest in Frenchifying his food. Mehrotra and Gaggan ended up being the most influential Indian chefs of this century with their dishes being copied all over the world.

Himanshu Saini, the only Indian chef with a restaurant that has three Michelin stars (Dubai’s Tresind Studio) worked with Manish and is candid about his debt to the master.

But now I think we are into a third phase. People want Indian food without the frills. They want to eat like Indians eat in India. Vikas Khanna, India’s most famous chef, opened Bungalow in New York, serving food that was no different to the food he would serve in India and got three stars from the New York Times, and there’s usually a queue for tables outside his restaurant. At the less expensive end of the market Dhishoom which claims to be inspired by Mumbai’s Irani restaurants is so successful across the UK that it has now set its sights on America.

Of course, no change is absolute. There are still Bangladeshi curry houses calling themselves Indian restaurants. The Frenchified expensive Indian restaurants survive. The Gaggan-style modern Indian is still a rage.

But the trend is clear: Keep it simple and keep it spicy.