Your ultimate guide to India

As someone minted in the country’s fanciest kitchens, celebrity chef Kunal Kapur was dead sure he’d seen it all fairly early: the best of Indian food, neatly plated, exhaustively mastered, made from the freshest ingredients in the shiniest cookware. And then he went and did the one thing fine-dining can’t emulate. He travelled. And I mean, really travelled. ‘The second you step out of the slicker parts of India, it’s a sort of rude awakening. Whatever we’re serving at pricey restaurants is literally a fraction of what Indian food really is,’ he admits, not rueful at all. ‘You think you know everything and then wham. A reality check hits you in the face.’ Fortunately the MasterChef India judge wasn’t (and still isn’t) precious about getting his hands dirty. And it’s because he temporarily ditched white tablecloths for dusty bylanes and roadside carts that he was able to find inspiration for his restaurant Pincode that first opened in Select Citywalk Mall, Saket (now closed). Today, the brand is present in Indore, Mohali, Bengaluru, and now in Goa, with the recently-opened Pincode Bungalow. ‘What really sets some of these places apart is that they look makeshift but have actually been around for decades,’ he says. ‘I call them one-dish wonders. Their menu’s tiny but the one thing they do, they do so well that there’s no point even trying to compete.’ At Pincode, he’s been trying to bring in some of that flavour into the regional Indian dishes, which are all inspired by his travels and childhood. ‘I didn’t want to relegate the best food I’ve ever had to a memory in my head. Everyone should get a chance to have a taste,’ he says.  But the real good stuff still lives where it always has: in the no-frills spots dotted across India. Here are the ones he keeps going back to. 

As it happens, it was nihari that was Chef Manish Mehrotra’s gateway drug into the big, bad world of non-vegetarian food. It’s a detail that feels faintly implausible when you remember that he grew up vegetarian – before spending an astonishing, career-defining two decades shaping the world-famous Indian Accent.  And yet – it’s the slow-cooked curry, not butter chicken or biryani, that makes him weak in the knees. Traditionally very spicy and made with beef or mutton shank, Manish first tasted it as a teenager in Lucknow and later rediscovered it in Delhi.  ‘Funnily enough, since I grew up vegetarian in Patna, I couldn’t even tell a mutton curry from nihari at first,’ he says, amused. ‘All I wanted was to get my hands on non-vegetarian food. Nihari just happened to win the jackpot.’ This tracks with the chef’s latest opening: Nisaba at Sunder Nursery, his very first gig as a chef-owner. Manish was, admittedly, the man who introduced the world to blue cheese naans and daulat ki chaat, but tags like ‘modern Indian’ and ‘inventive’ have dogged him too long. At Nisaba, he’s ready to move on, and he’s turned his attention to what he loves best: street food and regional dishes from the country’s bylanes.  Manish – like a true connoisseur – has tracked down all the nihari joints in Delhi. Some are underrated, some perhaps overrated; some incredibly refined, and some located in neighbourhoods you may not have heard of. But the best ones all have one thing in common: the nihari is mouthwateringly good. Simmered overnight, packed with spice, melt-in-your-mouth, and best enjoyed with a khamiri roti. And as Manish says, it’s the wobbly, gelatinous texture where the magic lies.  His recommendations come with a word of caution: the hole-in-the-wall spots aren’t for the faint-hearted. ‘Don’t shovel it down like it’s a full meal,’ he warns. ‘With all that spice and oil, your stomach will protest.’ And with that, here’s Manish’s guide to where you’ll find the very best nihari in the city.

Here's a fun fact about Mumbai, despite the richy-rich reputation. The city rewards you at every price point for food, if you know where to look. And who better to prove that than someone whose entire career is built on precision and taste? Nooresha Kably is the city's official expert on all things Japanese cuisine: literally. Like, appointed by the Japanese government as 'goodwill ambassador for the promotion of Japanese cuisine' official. Trained at the Tokyo Sushi Academy (on a whim, of all things), her restaurant Izumi in Bandra has done some pretty successful promoting, and sits comfortably at #12 on Condé Nast's Top 50 Restaurants of 2025. Her latest venture, Idoru, is one of the city's finest vinyl bars, with a unique spin on Japanese cocktails and bar snacks. So yes, obviously, she knows her food. But here's the thing – when I asked her for recommendations, she laughed and said, ‘I don't eat Japanese food too often on my time off.’  It turns out she eats across Mumbai, seriously and enthusiastically, from ₹550 thalis to 24-karat gold-plated khichidi. Here, ordered by how much they'll set one person each back, is where she's spending her time off duty.

Gluttonous street-style Punjabi food was something Chef Amninder Sandhu had sidestepped before first landing in Delhi in 2003, then as a trainee at the Taj. Slightly delicate stomach notwithstanding, it’s not like she’d had much of a chance to gorge herself silly on chhole bhature and street-side kebabs anyway, what with her adolescent years being spent in Northeast India.  It would be her five-star hotel colleagues, of all people, who’d end up driving her nuts about the gloriously tiny food spots of OG Dilli, with queues that rivalled grand festivals. Eventually, Amninder gave in. She realised why the staff ceaselessly waxed poetic – and she guarantees that soon, you will, too. Today, as she experiments with Punjabi dishes at her restaurants Bawri and Kikli, it’s these old favourites that remain her secret pleasures, and yes, she’s willing to spill the addresses. 

Chef Rijul Gulati’s hospitality knows no bounds. He is fun. Full of josh. And of course, a massive foodie. In other words, he’s the quintessential Delhi Boy. So you might understand my slightly prejudiced (I’m a Mumbaikar) surprise when I notice there is zero arrogance in the man when he chats to me about the changing currents in the culinary world and what Indian Accent Mumbai has in store. Despite finding towering success at a relatively young age, Rijul is still fuelled purely by passion and expertise. The picture of humility. There is absolutely zero room for Delhi tropes here.  But, at the risk of invoking a cliché, you can take the boy out of Delhi, but you can’t take Delhi out of the boy. After nearly a decade at Indian Accent in the capital, Rijul moved to Mumbai in 2023 to helm the restaurant’s brand new NMACC outpost. Mumbai can’t ever replace home, but it’s come with its own sense of community. Celebrity chefs Prateek Sadhu (NAAR) and Varun Totlani (Masque) are ‘dear brothers’, he says, while he remains tight with Manish Mehrotra, founding chef of Indian Accent, as well as Himanshu Saini of Michelin-starred Trèsind Studio fame.  But where does he go when the Delhi foodie in him starts to itch? ‘Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport,’ he says with a grin. Jokes apart, in the three years he’s been in Mumbai – a city not always known for getting North Indian food right – he’s found a handful of places that come close. Here’s his guide to Punjabi comfort classics in Mumbai. 

Chef Anahita Dhondy didn’t imagine she’d be running SodaBottleOpenerWala at 23. That decision – an audacious one by restaurateur AD Singh – dropped her straight into a high-pressure kitchen when most people her age were still figuring out their lives. And it worked. Even though the restaurant has since shuttered, Anahita’s name is still irrevocably tied to Parsi food in Delhi.  When she first stepped into a professional kitchen at 18, her goals were modest: survive the grind, don’t get yelled at too much, and get through service. Somewhere between her internships at Taj Delhi, a stint at Le Cordon Bleu in London, and SodaBottleOpenerWala, that modest need to survive blossomed into the very real ambition to succeed.  ‘The only reason Chef Saby (Sabyasachi Gorai – the key visionary behind SodaBottleOpenerWala) trusted me was because he saw I could command a kitchen at that age. He hadn’t really seen that very often, in men or women,’ she recalls. Though of course it helped that she was also the only one in the room who actually knew how to cook Parsi food. Anahita’s rise on Delhi’s food and bev scene, though, also coincided with a watershed moment for young women carving out a space for themselves in the culinary landscape. They had few women to look up to – celebrity chef Ritu Dalmia being one of them. ‘We were all figuring it out as we went,’ Anahita says of that time.  Things are different now. Things are looking up. Very many of the best restaurants in Delhi are women-led, and it’s hardly surprising that when Anahita eats out, she gravitates towards them. Here’s a guide to her favourites.