Raga’s PR proclaims the website crashed courtesy 7,000 reservation requests on the first day. There are restaurant openings, and then there are restaurant openings that become cultural events before the first table has even been served. Raga, the website-crasher reservation, firmly belongs in the second category.
Gaggan Anand opens doors to his first permanent restaurant in India, at Janpath in New Delhi. The 42-seat restaurant is the culmination of twenty years of unfinished business with Delhi, a city Anand once considered quitting cooking over. This time, he is coming home with Rydo Anton, his longtime collaborator and the chef who has been beside him for much of the Gaggan story. The name is a simple piece of shorthand: RA for Rydo Anton, GA for Gaggan Anand, with the added suggestion of a raga itself, structured but open to improvisation.
The partnership with restaurateurs Zorawar and Dildeep Kalra brings another interesting layer. Zorawar has built some of India’s earliest high-profile restaurants around the language of modernist cooking, and found his way to Gaggan’s Bangkok restaurant in 2025. The meal convinced him that the real thing belonged in India. Anand, after years of failed attempts to establish a permanent Indian address, eventually agreed. They took a trip to Japan to chat more, shake hands, choose bespoke serveware, and then make over 170 iterations of the restaurant’s blueprint.
What makes Raga particularly interesting is that this isn’t simply Gaggan transplanted from Bangkok to Delhi. Rydo is the central storyteller here and this seems like a deliberate centre-stage decision by Gaggan. Rydo is calm, collected, and allows his craft to translate on the plate, and do the talking. Gaggan, on the other hand, retains the freedom to move through the dining room, talk to guests, and cause a little trouble. It is a significant evolution for a chef whose personality has historically been inseparable from the food.
Gaggan left India twenty years ago to make Bangkok his home. In 2010, he opened Gaggan and began dismantling the conventions of Indian food, turning familiar flavours into elaborate acts of theatre, texture, and surprise. The restaurant eventually topped Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants five times and earned two Michelin stars. Then, at the height of its success, Anand walked away. Anton first walked into Gaggan’s Bangkok kitchen in 2013, cooked seven dishes for his trial and got the job. More than a decade later, the chef who joined as a young cook has become Gaggan’s collaborator and now, crucially, his partner at Raga.
If Gaggan brings the rebellion and Rydo brings his own rhythm, Kalra brings the restaurant-world muscle required to turn a long-running fantasy into an address. His career, from Masala Library and Farzi Café to Made in Punjab, has similarly been built around the conviction that Indian food can be rooted in India while still speaking to the world. Raga is where everyone’s trajectories finally intersect.
There are rules, naturally. Phones and cameras are banned for most of the meal. Seats are assigned. The experience costs ₹11,111 per person for food, before drinks and the booking fee.
Familiar signatures like the yoghurt explosion and golgappa show up in new clothes; Pink Blossom and Golden Egg. The courses that caught our attention include a vada pav meets Bombay sandwich (Aloo Bonda Sandwich) made out of onion meringue; a Cold Prawn Curry; Jhalmuri Cookie; Charcoal Mirchi (we’d like a steady supply of this); Betki Paturi that melts in your mouth; and our personal favourite – Bharta Donut. Don’t worry, they have a Lick It Up here as well. The food suggests that the duo has resisted the easiest temptation: nostalgia.
The menu needs trimming for a sharper story, that lands more nimbly and precisely. Skippables include the tequila soaked orange, Jamun Mojito, Pyaz Kachori, Monsoon Glass Papad, Earth & Grains, Sheermal. Restaurants take a month to tweak, adjust, and land comfortably in a sweet spot that honours vision and respects diner feedback. The coming month will be exactly that.
The interest and curiosity is palpable to see what happens when one of the world’s most disruptive Indian chefs returns home, to a new generation of Indian diners, and a collaborator who has grown alongside him.
The elaborate 22-course tasting menu feels like he has had unfinished business with India. As if, the longer he stayed away, the more Indian his palate apparently became. As if, flavours sharpened by distance. But Raga isn’t interested in nostalgia, it’s interested in the question Anand has been asking throughout his career: what if we did it differently?
