Best of the Best: 10 New Restaurants You Can Grab a Meal At

In 2025, it felt like a new restaurant opened every other day in India’s big cities. Indeed, in Mumbai and Delhi, monthly listings of new restaurants required many scrolls on phone screens. Mumbai got its first chef-designed restaurant, as well as a two-level bar with a fun food menu. In Delhi, two chefs introduced a menu that swings between masa and masala. Kolkata got a chef’s counter with a story-driven, region-rooted tasting menu. This year, smaller metros also opened new restaurants with massive personalities. Shillong welcomed an Italian restaurant that employs its indigenous ingredients in pizza and pasta. And in Goa, an imaginary itinerant character returned with recipes from his meanderings around the Mediterranean. It was, by all accounts, an exciting year to be eating out in India. But here it is, Robb Report India’s roundup of 2025’s most exciting restaurant openings.

Bar Paradox, Mumbai

The two-level space is part Art-Deco baroque, part boudoir. There are monkeys embroidered on the walls upstairs, and a backroom safari tent lined with New York designer Peter d’Ascoli’s prints. From chef Varun Totlani’s open kitchen come caviar bumps and Dorito-crusted, paneer-stuffed shishitos, thecha-spiked bone marrow, and a snap pea salad, each executed with equal care. There’s fermented squid on head bartender Ankush Gamre’s cocktail menu. Another big ticket, platinum-card-worthy drink with Johnnie Walker Blue Label, Pineau des Charentes, anantmool, and, yes, caviar again, is cheekily called Cheap Date. It sits right above a selection of cocktails on tap (the second tap has Absolut, Skinos, pea shoot leaf, rhubarb, and ginger). Everything here is underpinned with a lively sense of grown-up mischief. Bar Paradox, tucked away not far from big sibling Masque, inside an erstwhile textile mill in Mumbai, feels like a secret spot; and yet, months after its opening, reservations remain impossible. 

Fervor, Bengaluru

At Fervor, French technique meets high-quality ingredients and Indian hospitality, or as chef Aditya Varma likes to say, ‘fine dining meets familiarity.’ His creativity and precision is evident in every dish at this unfussy, welcoming 36-seater dining room with an open kitchen, tiled pitch roof, diaphanous chandelier, green walls, and pale pink floor. The menu opens with fried chicken, recently with hot sauce and scallions, and earlier with furikake and lollo rosso. There is octopus and glazed pork as a cheeky surf-and-turf, a Fervor burger with olive aioli, and roasted cauliflower with grapes, chickpeas and crème fraîche. Of course, there is steak with the classic (but rarely seen in India) sharp and creamy sauce raifort, and madeleines with coffee ice cream and brown butter crumble. 

Kaspers, Mumbai

Kaspers, a free-spirited Bandra bistro, in Mumbai, from Gauri Devidayal and Jay Yousuf’s Food Matters Group, feels like a lived-in scrapbook that chef Will Aghajanian has been piecing together in his head for many years. Every inch of the Barcelona-meets-New York-meets-Paris-meets-Berlin restaurant has been designed by the chef—be it the colours on the Gaudi-esque terrazzo floors or the devious cherubs by artist Kacper Abolik on its ceilings. The food is a little Basque, a little Italian, a little French, altogether comforting, and recognisably all Aghajanian. The cocktail menu has classics like a cold martini and Brandy Crusta. Aghajanian’s understanding of flavour and technique are littered across the menu: in the silky sea bream tartare with meunière, the baby gem salad with cucumber and dill or the crunchy arancini. 

Mister Merchant's

The ‘mister’ of Mister Merchant’s is a fictional half-Parsi, half-Bohri, Bombay-born wanderer who went looking for textiles, spices, and meals across the Mediterranean and the Silk Route. This imaginary character’s notebook, with its recipes and memories of grand feasts he hosted, inspired this Levantine spot in Moira’s members-only club Solene. In its plush, softly lit dining room— at the bar, on tables inside, or on the balcony—chef Rahul ‘Picu’ Gomes serves mezze-forward plates, employing local ingredients. Think atom, the fiery spiced whipped yogurt dip, merguez hummus with nduja chorizo, Turkish eggs with avocado chilli cream, and kunafa served as an ice cream stick. Drinks bridge ingredients from the Silk Route, such as Walnut to Coconut, with coconut-washed bourbon, walnut bitters, and chocolate milk. 

Nonna Mei, Shillong

A half-Gujrati, half-South Indian, Noma-trained Mumbai chef has opened an Italian spot in Shillong. Chef Niyati Rao (of Ekaa, KMC and Bombay Daak fame) recently launched Nonna Mei, named after the Italian and Khasi words for grandmother. Here, in a teakwood-rich space made to look like a warm, welcoming mountain home, Rao presents dishes that seem like a visiting nonna brought her Italian cooking techniques to a local mei’s kitchen; its cabinets packed with indigenous produce. Pizza gets topped with pickled chilli and blood sausage alongside burrata, roasted turnips come with sweet garlic and Meghalayan feta, and a negroni is infused with smoked pork. Nonna Mei’s plates and napkins are painted and embroidered with olives and lemons, ingredients that both cultures cherish. 

Nutcase Etc. , Kolkata

Every discerning Kolkata person since February last year speaks about chef Rituparna Banerjee and Avinandan Banerjee’s Nutcase Etc. While most diners consider it their favourite bar in Kolkata, others make plans to visit soon. Nutcase Etc. is a small bar that seats 32 people, within a 109-year-old building under a jazz club. From its soft, contoured oblong bar that wraps around the room, it serves a cocktail called Tangra Town, which is chilli chicken reimagined as a tipple. The Old Fashioned is served three ways: the classic; a breakfast twist with cereal-infused Dewars, toasted milk, and banana oleo; and one called Rare Steak with bone marrow and rosemary. Classics and riffs are both taken seriously—just read the note on the martini page in the menu— and there is plenty to be excited about on the three-page food menu, too. It opens with, “No pizza, no pasta, no naans, no curries, none of that. Oh come on, we are at a bar!” Who needs any of that when inside there are treats like mantou buns called Something Like Ema Datshi, or butter garlic crab; rum and plum pork belly gua bao; and to soak up the night, hot and salty After Party Noodles. 

Pendulo, Delhi

What sort of restaurant has a Mughlai pasanda spiked with Mexican chillies, served alongside bone marrow salsa and kulcha filled with Mexican-spiced avocado? Or batata vada taquitos with smoked tomato salsa, coriander verde and a salted green chilli? At Pendulo, meaning pendulum, an Indian chef and a Mexican chef collaborate to meld flavours without getting into fusion territory, instead finding a jugalbandi where the cuisines play off each other. Chefs Megha Kohli and Noah Louis Barnes have a 12-course tasting menu if you want a marathon of this medley, or an extensive à la carte selection that brings together masa, memory, mezcal, and masala. Both chefs draw from the vast and rich regionality of their country’s cuisines at this stylish 50-seater room done in copper and limestone, and plenty of fluted chandeliers, potted plants, arched windows—and, not to miss, a large carved clay pendulum at the entrance. 

Rannaghor By Sienna, Kolkata

Tucked above sienna Store and Cafe is a chef’s counter where the food tells stories about Bengal— its history, geography, politics, culture, communities—through a 13-course tasting menu over two hours. A charcuterie board called Snacks-Jam is made from local sweetwater fish, of which one of the courses is an elevated riff on ghee-bhaat. Chefs Avinandan Kundu and Koyel Roy Nandy, and their team move through their kitchen in a well-orchestrated symphony, setting down delicious, regional plates that have simple enough names like maach-dal or offal-kagji. But each looks sculptural and stunning. The food is scholarly without veering into smugness. For instance, among the dessert courses is a Horlicks ice cream, and one closing drink comes in an old-school medicine bottle of the digestive tonic Aqua Ptychotis by Bengal Chemicals. 

SoBo 20, Mumbai

Sobo 20, in the InterContinental’s iconic Art Deco building on Marine Drive, marked the beginning of South Mumbai’s revival. In this grand, high-ceilinged, theatrical, tall-windowed, light-bathed room, restaurateur Panchali Mahendra’s team serves Franco-American-inspired food with a bit of New Orleans charm and swagger. The flavours, though, have been selected to meet Mumbai’s palate. Wafer thin pizzettes come with chicken chorizo, kalamata olives, and fermented hot sauce; drink-friendly snacks go under a section called Before The Ice Melts; there is a full-flavoured Cobb salad that looks like a pie. For desserts, chef Sudeep Kashikar comes around with a trough of 70 per cent Valrhona and whiskey pate that sizzles with caramelised smoke—and causes a (polite) fracas at the table for the last bite. There are big, bold flavours for plant-based proclivities too, like the cornbread with mushroom pate, the Welcome Back Ratatouille or the piquant penne a la vodka. Speaking of which, the signature cocktail menu brings complimentary classics together. Who knew the French 75 and the Manhattan made a good match? 

The Sarvato, Jaipur

What happens when a royal in Rajasthan teams up with a restaurateur to showcase regional fare in a rooftop restaurant in the city’s palace complex? We get The Sarvato. Set around a chhatri, on the roof of a perfectly square 300-year-old palace complex building, diners can look up at the stars or look over at the City Palace while having a seasonal sixcourse menu (September through March) under the desert sky. The food philosophy at The Sarvato is unwavering: to showcase the state’s deep history and diverse culture through the food of its courts, traders, warriors, farmers, and travellers. Previous menus have included white bajra malai meat kofta, crisp gavar phalli, junglee maas, shatranj ki bissat, ghewar with malai, and raj kachori. Even rotis and rice arrive with a touch of royal tradition. Like the food, the beverage programme draws from the ingredients and techniques of the land surrounding it, its history, heritage, and craftsmanship. There is ber brine, khus, and pippali in drinks with names like The Chukker, Diwan-E-Khas, and Maharaja Martini, of course.