The 5 red flags a chef looks out for when dining at a high-end Indian restaurant
October 5, 20240
A dish that transcends trends — Aslam’s butter chicken is a grilled dish made at Aslam Chicken, a roadside shop outside Jama Masjid in Delhi. At Jazba, chef Bhardwaj recreated it for New York.
Alex Lau
These days, almost everyone can hype a restaurant or a particular dish through FoodTok or Instagram. But just because a restaurant or dish is trending on FoodTok or Instagram doesn’t necessarily mean it’s worth a trip, Bhardwaj shared.
The best way to decide if a place is worth your time and money is to make these decisions the old-school way: by asking around in your social circles.
“I look for more word-of-mouth places where people have actually been,” Bhardwaj told BI, adding that he prefers direct recommendations from friends or people who have been to the restaurant and will advise him on what to order and what to skip.
That way you get a first-person account of the spice levels, if the restaurant got the classics right, and what’s unique to their menu.
Expensive ingredients should elevate a dish while remaining true to Indian flavors.
Bhardwaj said that even when experimenting with flavors and textures, restaurants should not abandon what’s culturally important.
Metamore Studio/Shuterstock
As someone constantly cooking new ways of serving existing popular dishes, Bhardwaj said he understands the need to innovate, but also, the importance of not messing with a dish’s original flavors.
According to him, if a restaurant reinvents classics, such as the chicken tikka masala, but does so to appeal to Western tastebuds rather than innovate, it’s usually a bad sign.
“You could easily lose sight of maybe making something a little too Western in terms of the flavor or the dish itself. So I would say that’s probably the main thing that we try to stay away from,” Bhardwaj told BI.
“Make sure that the dish itself has that authenticity to it, and then try to elevate it through a fusion of techniques and ingredients.”
A quality Indian restaurant will ground its spices in-house instead of using store-bought ones.
The decor, presentation, and interiors of an upscale restaurant all add to the experience of eating there.
Mehmet Cetin/Shutterstock
“This might sound funny, but the restrooms are always very important,” Bhardwaj told BI, adding that this is a rule of thumb among most chefs and restauranteurs, who make mental notes on how well-kept the restaurant, especially the restroom, is.
“When you walk into a good restaurant, you’ve got to see that they’re taking care of their spaces. That’s No. 1,” Bhardwaj emphasized.
This, of course, applies to any fine-dining haunt you visit.
