Imagine sitting in a Michelin-star restaurant in New York.

You order some exquisite Kanyakumari Nandu Masala (crab masala). If you thought you were going to eat it with a fork and spoon, you’d be mistaken. At Semma, the restaurant that just received its first Michelin star last week, you will be encouraged to eat it with your hands.

Why, you ask?

Because that’s how it’s enjoyed in a typical Tamilian household, from where the dish originates.

Run by the hospitality group Unapologetic Foods, the team led by Roni Mazumdar and Chintan Pandya, believe in truly being unapologetically Indian. Semma’s food is a tribute to chef Vijaya Kumar’s childhood and the food he grew up eating.

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“Ours might be the only restaurant with a Michelin star where you are encouraged to eat with your hands,” laughs Roni, Founder & CEO, of Unapologetic Foods.

Roni adds, “When did the idea of eating with your hands become inferior? Growing up, we’ve always tried to use forks and spoons at restaurants, why? If you go to a Japanese restaurant, they will only give you chopsticks, no forks or spoons. If that is okay, why isn’t our authentic way of eating, with our fingers, acceptable?”

Their motto is simple – ‘move away from the Eurocentric vision of Indian food, and present food with authentic flavours, as they are cooked at our houses’. If that means making the dish spicy, that’s how it’s done.

So customers who order the Nandu Masala are given bibs and wet tissues so that they can use their hands to break open the shells, and enjoy the masala, the way it was intended.

The restaurant which opened........

© The Better India