Originally reported and written in May 2023, this story has been republished as part of our archival content.

On 25 March 2020, we lost the ‘godfather of modern Indian cuisine’ to COVID-19. Floyd Cardoz, a son of Mumbai, was a master chef and international restaurateur who seamlessly blended different cultures through his food, anchored in the magic of India’s regional cuisines.

Tabla, the first restaurant he set up in collaboration with restaurateur Danny Meyer in the Flatiron district of Manhattan, New York, in 1998, was according to food critic Vir Sanghvi, “the first Indian restaurant in America to get food critics to sit up and take Indian food seriously”.

Ruth Reichl, a food critic with The New York Times, said this in a February 1999 review. “For me, it was love at first bite. When I tasted seared foie gras with a pear, black pepper and anise compote, I swooned. Foie gras is always magical, but I was experiencing something new, as spice and sweetness went somersaulting through my mouth,” she wrote.

“Chills went down my back as I tried port-glazed sweetbreads, little morsels teased by the cool juiciness of pomegranate seeds and the crunch of lacy lotus roots. Each bite of spiced Maine crab cakes, wrapped in papadums, topped with avocado and glazed with tamarind, was a wonderful surprise. Yes, I thought. This is what I have been waiting for,” she added.

Dishes ranging from mustard fettuccine with braised veal, baby spinach, and tomato kasundi to duck-and-potato samosa and tandoori quail with black-pepper glaze exhibited a certain refinement associated with fine dining without ever shedding its regional Indian character.

Although the restaurant shut down in 2010, Cardoz’s stock as a culinary savant never dipped.

Among the first chefs born and raised in India, who made their mark in the United States, Cardoz was determined to bring the different styles of Indian cooking to the global mainstream. During an appearance on the TV show Ugly Delicious, he expressed a strong desire to break the stereotype that Indian food can’t be elevated, high-end and refined.

“Indians have to tell the story that our food is f----ing amazing. It doesn’t have to be thought of as pedestrian or cheap. We want to show you things that we eat here all the time,” he said.

Recalling the last time she met Cardoz at a dinner he was hosting, Indian American food writer Priya Krishna spoke of his influence in a column for Vogue India.

“Looking back, I wish that at that dinner, I had told him that even if he never opens another restaurant, that Indian dining in America would not look like what it does today without him…That Indian restaurants get to be high-end and........

© The Better India