Desi restaurant sans the stereotypes

A new upmarket desi restaurant in NY offers no tandoori chicken or fusion food. In contrast, the restaurant offers food that tastes just like ‘home food’. Newsweek has more:

It's a sweet homecoming for the 32-year-old chef. "Indians have forgotten their classical cuisine, so it needs to be exposed again," he says. "I'm not discovering these recipes; they are our heritage."

Growing up in a middle-class family, where three generations lived together and people routinely dropped in for meals, taught him to be gregarious from childhood. As in many Indian families, food mattered deeply. "The last thing we spoke about at night was what everybody wanted to eat the next day," Saran recalls. A powerful grandmother ruled the kitchen, along with Panditji, the cook who originally came as part of her dowry. He served as the family historian and raconteur, entertaining the children with stories as he cooked and making a deep impression on Saran.