I don’t write very often about individual restaurants because I am not sure if I get anything like the average guest experience when I am recognised (which happens reasonably often). So, I worry about recommending restaurants, only for readers to be disappointed when they follow my recommendations.
Even so, I have eaten out more often than usual in the last month. This is where I ate and, full disclosure, I was recognised or knew the chefs at most of these places. So, don’t mistake these for reviews by an anonymous critic.
Nisaba, Delhi. What’s left to say about Nisaba? I ate there twice during their preview phase (which was just as well, because it’s hard to get a table now that the restaurant is fully open) and wrote about it here. I predicted that it would be the hottest restaurant in Delhi, which sounded like a rash prediction, but was actually quite a low-risk sort of thing to say because Nisaba is the great Manish Mehrotra’s first restaurant of his own. And Manish has been, for the last decade or more, the best chef cooking in India.
Nisaba is more casual than Indian Accent, but more formal than Comorin, two of the most famous restaurants that Manish opened for Rohit Khattar. The cuisine is one generation removed from anything Manish has done before, and I have yet to meet anyone who hasn’t liked it. If you can get a table, grab it!
Louve, Delhi. This is a rarity: A decent upmarket restaurant in a part of Lutyen’s Delhi that is a bit of a gastronomic wasteland. The menu ranges from Mediterranean to Chinese, and the room is lovely. There are plans to open a pan-Asian restaurant on the first floor, which is probably why there is a Chinese section on the menu.
I went early in the life of the restaurant, so the service was a bit ragged around the edges, but well-meaning. I liked the Chinese food a lot but the Italian food was a little too desi-Italian for a restaurant that aims to be so upmarket. But give it time. I am sure they will get it right.
Perch, Humayun’s Tomb. There are many Perch outlets and this one has the advantage of being located below Nisaba in a buzzy courtyard. But that’s a disadvantage too, because people think it only does wine, cocktails and snacks. I went for lunch one day and was very impressed. It has serious food, masterminded by a gifted and experienced, chef and the service is warm, friendly and efficient. One to try for a weekend lunch.
Inja, Delhi.It’s always good to see a chef evolve. When chef Adwait opened this over-hyped restaurant, with its ambition of combining Japanese and Indian food, he had never been to Japan and was philosophically unaligned to the Japanese cooking credo of less-is-more. Some dishes worked well, but the food hardly lived up to the praise that influencers showered on it, or the hype that was manufactured. Fortunately Adwait has changed his style (he has been to Japan in the interim) and has worked out that Japanese food is less a collection of recipes than a philosophy of cooking. My last meal there had so little in common with the first one that it was almost as though a different chef was cooking. The food was very good: Full of flavour, and the dishes seemed simple and straightforward, even when they were actually quite complex. Adwait is a very talented chef. One to watch.
Farzi Cafe, Gurugram. Zorawar Kalra never gets the credit he deserves for popularising modern Indian food or for making Indian cuisine seem cool to a younger demographic. This is the original Farzi Cafe (it’s now an international mini-chain). I first came here shortly after it opened, when Himanshu Saini and Saurabh Udinia were in the kitchen, re-inventing popular Indian dishes. Both have since moved on and found fame, and Zorawar has now quietly and successfully relaunched Farzi with a new menu. I was surprised by the innovative energy he has brought to the food and by how much I enjoyed my lunch. It’s a classic, reborn.
Cajsa, Bengaluru. I stay at the ITC Gardenia when I am in Bengaluru, but mostly I only eat the excellent cuisine (donne biryani, benne dosa etc) or the delicious Nobu-style Japanese food at Edo, where the chef Amit Patra knows what I like. This time, I went to Cajsa, the hotel’s newish European restaurant, and was completely blown away. A young chef Shubham Shinh cooks innovative food that is hard to categorise because his flavours are drawn from around the world and the ingredients are top notch (the restaurant even has its own Cajsa-branded caviar). A real breakthrough for ITC and a restaurant that deserves to be much more famous than it is.
Masque, Mumbai.I have long been in a minority when it comes to Masque. When it opened, I didn’t think Prateek Sadhu’s food was very good and I got a little tired of all the farm-to-wallet nonsense (“this carrot was grown on our farm in Pune” etc) that so enthralled the media. By the time Prateek, who is a very gifted chef, got his act together and found his own voice, he was ready to move on. (To well-deserved success at the highly regarded Naar.) I was pleased to see that Varun Totlani, who was then promoted from within the kitchen to take his place, favoured a distinctive style of his own. I always intend to go back each time I am in Mumbai, but honestly, I am a little tired of tasting menus. Then, last week, Varun invited me to the kitchen when the restaurant was closed and only his core team was cooking.
Because I like talking to chefs, I enjoy eating in kitchens. But this was, by any standards, an exceptional experience. Varun is the rare Indian chef who recognises that texture is an important component of flavour. He has now cooked all around the globe with the world’s best chefs and has sharpened his edge with all that experience. His style is unique and his food is outstanding. I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed myself so much at dinner. And his team is terrific: It includes the winners of the Culinary Culture awards for Best Young Chef, Best Sommelier and Best Restaurant Manager. All of them contribute massively to the experience, but the best reason for going to Masque is Varun himself.
Kaspers, Mumbai. Will Aghajanian was a star in California until a series of circumstances brought him to India. Great chefs don’t usually move to India from the West, so Mumbai got lucky. Will first refreshed and transformed the menu at The Table, which is now one of those must-go-to places, before the owners of The Table opened Kaspers, a small restaurant that serves as a vehicle for Will’s talent. It’s hard to top The Table, but Will has done it. Even dishes that appear on The Table’s menu (the burger, the marrow etc) are done differently, and so sure is Will’s touch that though I ate my way through his menu there was not one dud dish. Everything was not perfect. Service was lazy, unprofessional and incompetent. Some people might find the tables too close together. But Will’s food makes up for everything else.
From HT Brunch, February 28, 2026
Follow us on www.instagram.com/htbrunch
