The Indian chef who took Tamil fare international and received a ‘meals Oscar’

[ad_1] <img sizes="(min-width: 1280px) 50vw, (min-width: 1008px) 66vw, 96vw" srcset="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/240/cpsprodpb/2eb9/live/7c3d09a0-4fe7-11f0-a0aa-1d570e26aa44.jpg.webp 240w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/320/cpsprodpb/2eb9/live/7c3d09a0-4fe7-11f0-a0aa-1d570e26aa44.jpg.webp 320w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/2eb9/live/7c3d09a0-4fe7-11f0-a0aa-1d570e26aa44.jpg.webp 480w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/640/cpsprodpb/2eb9/live/7c3d09a0-4fe7-11f0-a0aa-1d570e26aa44.jpg.webp 640w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/800/cpsprodpb/2eb9/live/7c3d09a0-4fe7-11f0-a0aa-1d570e26aa44.jpg.webp 800w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1024/cpsprodpb/2eb9/live/7c3d09a0-4fe7-11f0-a0aa-1d570e26aa44.jpg.webp 1024w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1536/cpsprodpb/2eb9/live/7c3d09a0-4fe7-11f0-a0aa-1d570e26aa44.jpg.webp 1536w" src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/2eb9/live/7c3d09a0-4fe7-11f0-a0aa-1d570e26aa44.jpg.webp" loading="eager" alt="Getty Images for James Beard Foundation Vijay Kumar winner of Best Chef: New York State award speaks on stage during the 2025 James Beard Restaurant and Chef Awards on June 16, 2025 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Daniel Boczarski/Getty Images for James Beard Foundation)" class="sc-d1200759-0 dvfjxj"/> Getty Photos for James Beard Basis Vijay Kumar accepts the Finest Chef: New York State award on the 2025 James Beard Awards

In Manhattan's West Village, the place culinary traits can change with the seasons, Chef Vijay Kumar is shaping a quiet revolution.

His 2025 James Beard Award win for Finest Chef: New York State this month is extra than simply private recognition - it marks a cultural inflection level.

Chennai-based culinary historian Rakesh Raghunathan says: "Following within the footsteps of fellow Tamil-origin recipients like Raghavan Iyer and Padma Lakshmi, Vijay Kumar's recognition displays a rising momentum for south Indian voices on the worldwide culinary stage".

"Tamil delicacies - together with Sri Lankan Tamil and different south Indian regional traditions - is more and more being embraced by international diners as one thing refined, wealthy, and deeply rooted in tradition."

Born within the small farming village of Arasampatti, Madurai in southern Tamil Nadu, the 44-year-old Kumar has at all times cooked from reminiscence - of forests and foraging, firewood stoves and his mom and grandmother serving meals made out of scratch for the household.

When he took the stage on the JB awards ceremony, he mentioned "the meals I grew up on, the meals made with care, with hearth, with soul is now taking the principle stage". It was a second of deep emotion and cultural delight for Kumar.

"There isn't any such factor as a poor particular person's meals, or a wealthy particular person's meals. It is meals. It is highly effective. And the true luxurious is to have the ability to join with one another across the dinner desk."

<img sizes="(min-width: 1280px) 50vw, (min-width: 1008px) 66vw, 96vw" srcset="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/240/cpsprodpb/c09a/live/737f0d80-4dae-11f0-8fe0-93859de315e8.jpg.webp 240w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/320/cpsprodpb/c09a/live/737f0d80-4dae-11f0-8fe0-93859de315e8.jpg.webp 320w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/c09a/live/737f0d80-4dae-11f0-8fe0-93859de315e8.jpg.webp 480w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/640/cpsprodpb/c09a/live/737f0d80-4dae-11f0-8fe0-93859de315e8.jpg.webp 640w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/800/cpsprodpb/c09a/live/737f0d80-4dae-11f0-8fe0-93859de315e8.jpg.webp 800w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1024/cpsprodpb/c09a/live/737f0d80-4dae-11f0-8fe0-93859de315e8.jpg.webp 1024w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1536/cpsprodpb/c09a/live/737f0d80-4dae-11f0-8fe0-93859de315e8.jpg.webp 1536w" src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/c09a/live/737f0d80-4dae-11f0-8fe0-93859de315e8.jpg.webp" loading="lazy" alt="Paul Mcdonough IMulaikattiya Thaniyam - sprouted mung beans, photo credit Paul McDonough" class="sc-d1200759-0 dvfjxj"/> Paul Mcdonough The farmers market salad with sprouted mung beans sings with recent flavours

For Kumar, the win is a private milestone but in addition a strong act of visibility.

"Once I began cooking, I by no means thought a dark-skinned boy from Tamil Nadu might make it to a room like this," he mentioned in his acceptance speech. It was subsequently essential for him to put on veshti, the normal Tamil apparel for males, for the black-tie James Beard ceremony as a nod to his roots.

Lately, Kumar was trolled by a pair of influencers in New York. Fast to rise to his defence was Padma Lakshmi, cookbook writer and culinary ambassador, who referred to as the influencers out for his or her cultural insensitivity.

Talking to the BBC, Lakshmi mentioned "Vijay's story is essential not only for south Indian meals but in addition as a narrative of somebody who grew up with humble means and cooked with restricted assets."

"This resourcefulness has not solely propelled his work ethic however enhanced his sense of flavour, substances and sense of the world. He's a beacon of hope to younger folks everywhere in the world that for those who belief and develop your senses and abilities, you'll be able to go far in a inventive profession."

Kumar's journey wasn't easy to start out with.

Unable to afford engineering faculty within the massive metropolis, he selected culinary faculty as an alternative - starting his journey at Taj Connemara lodge in Chennai, cooking his means by cruise ships and kitchens, and finally discovering his promised land in America, working at Dosa in San Francisco.

His actual breakthrough got here when he partnered with Roni Mazumdar and Chintan Pandya of Unapologetic Meals, a New York restaurant group, to open Semma - a Tamil slang phrase for "unbelievable" in 2021.

<img sizes="(min-width: 1280px) 50vw, (min-width: 1008px) 66vw, 96vw" srcset="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/240/cpsprodpb/c6c6/live/91105c40-5011-11f0-8c0a-5b816c079050.jpg.webp 240w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/320/cpsprodpb/c6c6/live/91105c40-5011-11f0-8c0a-5b816c079050.jpg.webp 320w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/c6c6/live/91105c40-5011-11f0-8c0a-5b816c079050.jpg.webp 480w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/640/cpsprodpb/c6c6/live/91105c40-5011-11f0-8c0a-5b816c079050.jpg.webp 640w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/800/cpsprodpb/c6c6/live/91105c40-5011-11f0-8c0a-5b816c079050.jpg.webp 800w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1024/cpsprodpb/c6c6/live/91105c40-5011-11f0-8c0a-5b816c079050.jpg.webp 1024w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1536/cpsprodpb/c6c6/live/91105c40-5011-11f0-8c0a-5b816c079050.jpg.webp 1536w" src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/c6c6/live/91105c40-5011-11f0-8c0a-5b816c079050.jpg.webp" loading="lazy" alt="Paul Mcdonough The nathai pirattal, Tamil farm to table escargot, invokes Kumar's childhood " class="sc-d1200759-0 dvfjxj"/> Paul Mcdonough Nathai pirattal, Tamil farm-to-table escargot, evokes Chef Kumar's childhood reminiscences

The trio discovered a "shared sense of desirous to honour our heritage, to inform the world who we actually are by our delicacies".

"At that second, it wasn't nearly meals, it was about id," Mazumdar informed the BBC. "For too lengthy, Indian meals within the US has lived below the veil of a manufactured, watered-down north-western lens. With Semma, we got down to pull again that curtain and share one thing extra trustworthy."

Kumar jumped on the alternative to share his delicacies with the world. "His eyes lit up once we began speaking concerning the meals we grew up consuming, and that form of meals not often makes it to restaurant menus," recollects Mazumdar.

Kumar's power lies in serving genuine village meals that's seasonal, hyper-local, and constructed totally from scratch. His farm-to-table strategy, he says, was to prepare dinner the best way "my mom and grandmother did". Semma, he provides, is a celebration of that simplicity.

That simplicity resonates.

Semma's menu defies the clichés that usually outline Indian meals overseas. There is no butter hen or naan right here and Kumar's epiphany got here with an unlikely encounter: French escargot.

As a baby, on days when rice was scarce, he would forage together with his household for snails within the paddy fields, which might be cooked in a savoury tamarind sauce. Kumar admitted that he was ashamed of it as a boy because it "felt like meals born of poverty - till I noticed the delight with which the French serve escargot".

At present, the dish, nathai pirattal, sits proudly on Semma's menu, reimagined not as a reminiscence of shortage, however as an emblem of resilience and cultural delight.

Semma's menu - pepper rasam, tamarind crab, banana flower vadai, the ever present dosa - supply an emotional connection for a lot of diaspora diners, and a revelation for first-timers.

<img sizes="(min-width: 1280px) 50vw, (min-width: 1008px) 66vw, 96vw" srcset="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/240/cpsprodpb/6c66/live/9ee131f0-5011-11f0-8c0a-5b816c079050.jpg.webp 240w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/320/cpsprodpb/6c66/live/9ee131f0-5011-11f0-8c0a-5b816c079050.jpg.webp 320w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/6c66/live/9ee131f0-5011-11f0-8c0a-5b816c079050.jpg.webp 480w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/640/cpsprodpb/6c66/live/9ee131f0-5011-11f0-8c0a-5b816c079050.jpg.webp 640w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/800/cpsprodpb/6c66/live/9ee131f0-5011-11f0-8c0a-5b816c079050.jpg.webp 800w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1024/cpsprodpb/6c66/live/9ee131f0-5011-11f0-8c0a-5b816c079050.jpg.webp 1024w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1536/cpsprodpb/6c66/live/9ee131f0-5011-11f0-8c0a-5b816c079050.jpg.webp 1536w" src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/6c66/live/9ee131f0-5011-11f0-8c0a-5b816c079050.jpg.webp" loading="lazy" alt="Paul Mcdonough Semma's "Whistle Podu", (drop that whistle), a curry leaf infused gin, and other cocktails are a cheeky nod to Tamil pop culture " class="sc-d1200759-0 dvfjxj"/> Paul Mcdonough Semma's "Whistle Podu" gin and cocktails pay a cheeky tribute to Tamil popular culture

Kumar's intention to convey village-style Tamil meals and showcase it in upscale spots and within the cut-throat New York restaurant house has received an extended line of admirers.

There's depth, regionality and a strong emotional connection on this meals.

The cocktails are a nod to Tamil movie stars like Rajnikanth and Silk Smitha, and the décor channels Chennai's heat. Even the kitchen is an area of intention - cooks are requested to arrange meals with "gratitude and mindfulness".

"I invited him to curate a black-tie gala dinner for 650 friends on the Gold Gala in Los Angeles, and he made us all proud. A 12 months later, folks nonetheless speak about how unbelievable the meals was," says Lakshmi, applauding Kumar's reward for bringing regional Indian delicacies to essentially the most glamorous platforms.

The awards and accolades really feel like a pure development of his journey. Semma is the primary New York restaurant serving solely south Indian delicacies to win a Michelin star and topped The New York Instances's listing for prime 100 eating places. And now the JBA for Kumar.

In some ways, Kumar is not only serving meals - he's serving reminiscence, delight and a quiet revolution.

His James Beard win is a recognition of his expertise, but in addition an affirmation that regional Indian delicacies, with its daring spices and soulful simplicity, belongs on the centre of the worldwide desk.

Kumar's win has piqued the "curiosity of younger folks from everywhere in the Indian diaspora and instilled a better delight in our meals methods", says Lakshmi. "This might be his best legacy."