Opening Naar, chef Prateek Sadhu’s fine dining restaurant in a remote Himalayan village, where there was no obvious audience, no convenient infrastructure, and no precedent, was a bet that invited near-universal skepticism. “Most chefs build restaurants where the infrastructure, audience, and convenience already exist. We chose the opposite. We listened to our hearts and opened in a remote mountain village where nothing about fine dining was obvious or easy. But that decision allowed us to build something honest. It could only exist in the mountains, and that is precisely why it works.”
That conviction that a restaurant must truly belong to where it stands, runs through everything Prateek Sadhu cooks. His food is shaped by Himalayan landscapes, seasons, and produce. The ingredients, the air, the quiet, none of these are just part of the backdrop. They are the point. It is also, he believes, exactly what the next generation of luxury diner is looking for. “They are less interested in traditional markers of luxury like opulence or rarity. Instead, they want to understand the story behind what they are eating, where it comes from, who grows it, why it matters. They are far more open to new ideas and landscapes, which is why a destination like this resonates with them.”
The individual who makes the journey is making a particular statement; not about status or access, “Most chefs build restaurants where the infrastructure, audience, and convenience already exist. We chose the opposite.” but about what they consider worth their time. “The guest is someone willing to travel for meaning rather than convenience. They come not just for a meal, but for the entire journey: the mountains, the air, the people, and the food that is shaped by that environment.”
His view of luxury distils all of this into something simple. “True luxury will be defined by depth of experience and authenticity of place. The most powerful luxury will be something you cannot replicate elsewhere,” the chef notes. In a world where fine dining concepts travel easily between cities and menus migrate across continents, this is a deliberate refusal: Fine dining exists here—or it doesn’t at all.
Chef Rahul Akerkar once wrote a public letter of apology to his patrons, shut his restaurant, and reopened months later with an entirely new concept. He was successful the second time around. That willingness to admit when something isn’t right—and to act on it—has defined his career as much as anything he has built.
The chef-restaurateur who has shaped some of Mumbai’s most formative dining addresses over three decades has spent his career watching the industry evolve. His instincts have consistently run against the grain, choosing not to scale when scaling was possible, walking away from what he’d built when the quality began to erode, closing things rather than repeating formulas thoughtlessly. “Restaurants aren’t templates, they’re ecosystems. What works in one place, at one moment, with one team, doesn’t necessarily travel well. Sometimes it’s better to be a big small company rather than a small big company,” the chef shares.
That philosophy cost him, more than once. When his partners decided to ramp up Indigo Deli beyond its natural scale, something “Restaurants aren’t templates, they’re ecosystems. What works in one place, at one moment, with one team, doesn’t necessarily travel well.” was lost. “It became less about the hospitality and more about the numbers, and we lost the ability to deliver the quality product that we were known for. I eventually walked away from what I’d built.”
His vision of where luxury dining is headed feels real rather than theoretical. The best restaurants of the future, he believes, will be defined not by what they add but by what they edit out. “Real luxury will be a sense of ease, where nothing feels forced or over-explained. The future of luxury dining won’t be louder. It will be quieter, more confident, and more considered.” The new generation of diner, he observes, is asking better questions: about sourcing, technique, story. But they still expect the experience to feel effortless. “Luxury, for them, is less about display and more about meaning.”
On spectacle versus substance, he is characteristically direct. Spectacle photographs well and travels fast. But it doesn’t age well. “The more interesting restaurants today are the ones that have moved past trying to impress and are focused on getting things right, on the plate, in the room, and behind the scenes.”
Rakshay Dhariwal has spent his career building things India didn’t yet have. In 2012, that meant PCO (Pass Code Only), the country’s first speakeasy-style cocktail bar, tucked behind a PCO (public call office) phone booth entrance in Delhi. Over the following decade, Pass Code Hospitality grew into one of India’s most edgy and innovative F&B portfolios: Jamun, SAZ, Ping’s, ATM, and a string of other concepts each built around a gap in the market. Then came the pandemic, and with it, a different ambition. Dhariwal had noticed something that most in the industry had overlooked: wild agave had been growing across India’s Deccan Plateau for generations, waiting to be taken seriously as a source of fine spirits. From that observation, he built Maya Pistola Agavepura, Asia’s first aged 100% agave spirit, distilled and aged in Goa.
Since launching, Maya Pistola has collected over 30 international awards and, in 2024, Diageo’s United Spirits took a strategic stake in the brand, a validation few emerging spirit categories in India have seen. The new luxury diner, he observes, is already meeting him halfway. They arrive informed, ask about provenance, want to understand why additive-free matters. What they will not forgive is indifferent service. “Hospitality is the true marker of luxury, how [diners] are treated, how well they are understood, and how consistently that experience is delivered.”
Chef Regi Mathew has built a reputation on a philosophy that runs against the grain of contemporary fine dining: that preservation, executed with conviction, can be more radical than reinvention. As deconstructions and novelty flourish in today’s culinary landscape, Mathew has made an art of leaving things alone. His relationship with food began at home, helping his mother cook after his father’s passing. That early grounding in family, memory, and tradition stayed.
Before opening Kappa Chakka Kandhari in Chennai, in 2018, Mathew and co-founder Augustine Kurian spent three years travelling through Kerala, eating at over 265 homes and 70 toddy shops, gathering 800 recipes from home cooks and toddy shop cooks— the people who had kept those recipes alive for generations. The restaurant’s name—kappa, chakka, kandhari (tapioca, jackfruit, bird’s eye chilli)—says everything: Three ingredients, unambiguously Kerala. “The banana leaf, the cadence of service, the sequencing of dishes— these are not aesthetic choices but lived experiences,” he says.
In February 2025, Mathew took that conviction to New York with Chatti, a tribute to Kerala’s toddy shop culture. The decision to open in one of the world’s most competitive cities when it comes to fine dining, without softening the cuisine for global palates was, by any measure, a bold one. “We resisted the temptation to adapt Kerala cuisine to global expectations and chose to present it in its real and honest avatar. In luxury markets, reinvention is often rewarded. But preservation, when executed with conviction, can be even more radical.” It is a position that has found its audience. Today’s luxury diner, Mathew observes, arrives at the table differently from before. “They question, understand, and engage. Luxury today is about context and consciousness.”
Recognised among India’s top chefs and honoured at international culinary platforms, Mathew’s trajectory makes a pointed argument: that the most sophisticated thing an Indian chef can do right now is trust where he comes from.
Rohit Khattar has been building restaurants since 1990, when he opened Chor Bizarre in Delhi. In the three and a half decades since, he has created one of the country’s most influential hospitality portfolios with Indian Accent, Comorin, and Hosa, all with a clear philosophy behind them. According to Khattar that philosophy has always been simpler than it might appear.
“Staying true to their concepts even when there’s pressure to dilute, switch gears, or conform to expectations. It was important for us to create distinct identities for each brand,” he says. It sounds straightforward but in practice, it requires a lot of discipline that becomes visible when you see how many restaurants around you don’t manage it.
Khattar’s brands, from the regional comfort food of Comorin to the south Indian culinary exploration of Hosa to the inventive Indian cooking of Indian Accent are each unmistakably themselves. His view of what the industry needs to do next is similarly cleareyed. He says, “Restaurants that allow the creativity and authenticity of their chefs, their beverage and service teams, and their designers to shine and keep innovating create the benchmark for global luxury.”
On luxury itself, he cuts through the noise with characteristic economy. “Anything that gives an experience and is timeless. The most precious commodity for anyone who has the money is to be able to take out the time for something that knocks their socks off, either through pure drama or through tranquility.” The new generation of diner, he observes, has arrived at a similar conclusion from the other side. They are less interested in the traditional trappings of luxury and more in how unique and interesting an experience is. A very casual restaurant, he notes, can offer its own kind of luxury, too.
Hunger Inc. Hospitality was founded on the question: what does it mean to celebrate India through food, and how do you keep asking that question in ways that stay honest? Sameer Seth and Yash Bhanage, the founders behind The Bombay Canteen, O Pedro, Bombay Sweet Shop, Veronica’s, and Papa’s, have been answering it differently with each venture since 2015. The restaurants they build don’t follow a template. What connects them is an instinct for cultural specificity and an allergy to the generic.
Their most unconventional decisions reveal how they think. When The Bombay Canteen and O Pedro were thriving, the obvious move was replication. Seth resisted it. “We [wondered] what if we built something that could travel into people’s homes rather than asking them to come into our spaces? That led to Bombay Sweet Shop. It allowed us to scale culture, not just square feet.” Bombay Sweet Shop reframed mithai not as a traditional category or a gifting afterthought but as a design object, a cultural statement, an edible expression of what Bhanage calls “confident cultural pride.” Better ingredients, sharper flavours, the same emotional weight but updated for the India of today.
“We were trying to present mithai with the same design thinking and storytelling that any global confectionery brand would receive,” says Bhanage. Their most unconventional call was placing Papa’s, Hunger Inc.’s fine-dining restaurant, directly above Veronica’s, a bustling sandwich shop. The friction was intentional.
“We were interested in contrast and in grounding fine dining in real city life rather than insulating it from it. That reflects how we think about luxury itself, not as something detached or intimidating, but as something that can coexist with energy and everyday life without losing its depth,” concludes Bhanage.
The granddaughter of Captain CP Krishnan Nair, founder of The Leela Palaces, Hotels & Resorts, Samyukta Nair spent her early career in design and operations at the group before striking out on her own. In 2016, she opened Jamavar in Mayfair, London, a fine-dining Indian restaurant that became one of the most celebrated in the city. What followed was a portfolio of distinct concepts, each with its own identity and point of view. That instinct to layer and evolve rather than replicate has been one of her most unconventional business decisions. “Growth doesn’t always come from creating something entirely new, but from recognising where to sharpen your offering and staying closely attuned to your community.”
Her approach to building global brands is rooted in the same philosophy. The world may shift between the conception of a project and its opening, she says. What keeps a brand relevant is staying close to its audience without losing its identity. Nair adds, “Authenticity isn’t static. Especially with regional cuisines, it’s important to reflect what they are today, not just what they were in the past. It’s about expressing a living, evolving perspective of culture.”
On the new generation of luxury diner, she is crystal clear. She understands that they define authenticity differently now. And it is no longer just about cuisine but about transparency in storytelling and a clear point of view. “Today’s diners are far more discerning and are looking for experiences that feel personal, considered, and true to the brand.”
Her vision of luxury distils all of this into something that feels both simple and hard to achieve. “Restaurants will be spaces where people feel recognised and understood, not just served. Luxury is less about scale and more about how a space makes you feel—personal, considered, and memorable.”
Vijaya Kumar grew up in a small town in Tamil Nadu’s Dindigul district, where his mother and grandmother cooked from scratch and food was rooted in land, season, and family. Those early memories now sit at the heart of Semma, his restaurant in New York’s West Village, one of the most celebrated Indian restaurants in the world.
Semma holds a Michelin star and was ranked the number one restaurant in New York by one of America’s most respected food publications. In 2025, Kumar won the James Beard Award for Best Chef in New York State, the first Indian chef to receive the honour. His most unconventional decision was also his most defining: to cook a very specific cuisine—food from Tamil Nadu—that most people had never encountered and to have the patience to let them understand it. “It was an unconventional choice, betting on something deeply personal rather than broadly appealing,” Kumar shares. Early on, there was pressure to soften dishes, adjust spice levels, and make things more approachable. But that doesn’t work. “The moment you start compromising the integrity of the food to meet perceived expectations, you lose the very thing that makes it special. People don’t want a diluted version of a culture, they want the real thing.”
His philosophy extends to how he thinks about tradition and evolution, two things he refuses to treat as opposites. “Tradition is the foundation, and evolution comes from modifying what is available around me here, without diluting the soul of the dish in the process.” The new generation of diner, the chef says, has made this easier. Their curiosity pushes him to go deeper into his own roots, discovering parts of his history and home that were unknown even to him. “That hunger for something real and meaningful has pushed me to go deeper into my own culinary roots,” he shares.
Long before Indian cuisine became a talking point in fine dining circles abroad, Vikas Khanna was in New York making the case, not by softening his identity to fit an existing template, but by refusing to. That refusal, he says, was the turning point. “Early in my career in America, I tried to fit into an existing fine-dining template. I softened my identity because I believed the world was not ready for the depth and diversity of Indian cuisine. That was my failure. When you dilute your culture, you also dilute your power.”
The most unconventional decision he made was also the most clarifying: to present Indian cuisine with its full cultural context, festivals, rituals, regional diversity, memory, without apology or simplification. Celebrating Raksha Bandhan and Onam at his New York restaurant Junoon drew skepticism. Those became, he says, the moments guests remembered most. “Authenticity is not risky in business,” he reflects. “It is the strongest form of brand identity.” Junoon earned a Michelin star, a recognition that arrived not despite its conviction but because of it.
On the power of Indian cuisine in this moment, he is characteristically eloquent. “Indian cuisine offers something the world is seeking right now—balance, mindfulness, and philosophy. The modern luxury diner is not only consuming a meal. They are seeking identity, belonging, and memory.” And for Khanna, this was never a trend. It was always the point.
For Zorawar Kalra, a restaurant has never been just a restaurant. RR Circle member and the founder of Massive Restaurants, the group behind Farzi Café, Masala Library, Pa Pa Ya and Bo Tai, among others, has spent his career building what he calls ‘universes rather than menus.’ The son of culinary legend Jiggs Kalra, Zorawar Kalra inherited both a reverence for Indian cuisine and a restlessness to push it somewhere new. His restaurants span India, the Middle East, London, and New York, and each one carries a point of view that is unmistakably his own. With Farzi Café, this meant leaning into theatre, irreverence, and disruption at a time when Indian dining was still expected to fit more traditional shapes. “We took familiar flavours and reimagined them with wit, technique, and mischief. That was not the safe route. I have built brands like cultural experiences. That instinct to create emotion, energy, and identity before creating a place to eat has perhaps been the most unconventional, and also the most rewarding.”