Chef Sujan Sarkar is carefully balanced. Whether it’s his attire, his words or his demeanor. He was dressed in a simple blue T-shirt and striped, blue pyjamas when I met him a couple of hours before his one Michelin-starred restaurant, Indienne, was due to open for its dinner routine. He chooses to say neither the good, nor the bad. He says what is in his mind, but measured, just like his ingredients.
His food, however, is a burst of flavor, innovation and true style. I will elaborate more on that later. But what catapulted a boy from Kolkata, India, to Chicago in United States of America? Chef Sarkar’s journey hasn’t been balanced.
From a suburb of Kolkata…
A young Sujan Sarkar would see his agriculturist father working in the fields, interacting with fresh produce and the nature around him. He would see his mother and aunts working in the kitchen, meticulously making large amounts of food for the big family they had. He was surrounded by food. But that was not what influenced him to become a chef. At least not at that time.
“I wanted to become a fashion designer,” Chef Sarkar laughs and speaks. “After high school I was trying to get into NIFT and NID. I spent two years working towards it, I was very close, but you know it wasn’t easy. I’m talking about almost 24 years ago, and at that time it was tough. I couldn’t make it.”
Chef Sarkar eventually chose the next best option he had – hotel management from Bhubaneswar in Odisha, India. His first gig was at JW Marriott in Mumbai in 2003, after which he moved to London to work in multiple high-end restaurants, eventually living there for 11 years. “London was a kind of game changer for me,” he says. “I learned and honed my skills, while also utilizing my creativity there. You can express who you are with food, and London changed how I look at food today. It gave me a lot of confidence because I worked with top people there. It was bittersweet I would say.”
Fate saw him coming back to India and working with the famed AD Singh of Olive Bar & Kitchen to open Ek Bar, an artisanal cocktail bar.
….to Chicago
Armed with a culinary insight into modern Indian cuisine, Chef Sarkar soon sought the shores of America. And perhaps, this is where his true legacy begins. That was fate again. He confesses that America was simply not planned. “After London, where I did my first pop-up, I realized that I have to go back to India to learn more and try new recipes. So then I started working with Olive, opened the artisanal Ek Bar, which was progressive and new for India at that time. After that, I was planning to go back to London and start something else. But then I got the opportunity to do ROOH, and I landed in the Bay Area. So that’s how it started. It wasn’t planned,” he reminisces.
He opened ROOH in San Francisco, which has continued to receive high acclaim ever since then. Soon came ROOH New Delhi, followed by ROOH in Palo Alto, and now ROOH in Columbus, Ohio. He is a partner and co-founder at Good Times Restaurants which owns these four restaurants.
In between, he worked at ROOH Chicago as well (which is not owned by Good Times Restaurants though). There have been whispers of his not-so-amicable break-up with ROOH Chicago. There has been a Chicago magazine article questioning his credibility. But eventually, Chef Sarkar has been only going up and onward. So I don’t think he cares.
He has gone on to open Baar Baar in New York City and Los Angeles, Swadesi in Chicago, and also Tiya in San Francisco with his brother Pujan Sarkar. He has helped conceptualise and develop more restaurant concepts: Sifr (Chicago), Feringhee (Chandler, Arizona), and Gulaabo (NYC). Phew! The timeline of all these openings is a little tougher to track, with all of them happening almost parallelly, at a breathtaking speed.
His crown jewel, though, is Indienne – the modern Indian restaurant with French influence, which has earned him a much-coveted Michelin star. Decorated in a very subtle Italian-French fashion, as compared to his other restaurants which are more Indian, seemingly Sabyasachi-inspired, Indienne is the only Indian restaurant in Chicago to earn the star.
After ROOH Chicago, and because he was “stuck” in Chicago due to COVID, Chef Sarkar worked towards his concept for Indienne, and launched the restaurant in 2022. One year later, he had the Michelin star under his belt. This turned out to be wonderful news for Chicago, who has now 21 restaurants with Michelin stars, as compared to New York City’s 67, San Francisco’s 26 and Los Angeles’ 23 (as of data pulled up in June 2024).
Exploring Indienne, and Chef Sujan Sarkar
As I sat down to dine at Indienne, I had no idea what to expect. Yes, modern Indian food is no longer unheard of. But not many Michelin-starred modern Indian restaurants exist.
My first course included dual appetizers – Blackberry (Pani Puri) and Mushroom (Galouti). Both redefined Indian taste through uncharacteristic ingredients. A buckwheat tart held a carefully balanced stable reddish sphere. When we picked it up, the bubble shook like jelly, and we expected it to feel like that as well. But when we put the entire tart in our mouth (pani puri style), the bubble burst with tangy, salty, spicy flavored water – exactly what an Indian would expect from pani puri – and instantly melted inside in our mouth! The best part, the buckwheat tart hadn’t lost its crispiness, even though it had been sitting like that for a while. Who could have imagined that a blackberry could taste like that!
This was a probably a rare glimpse of a molecular gastronomy technique that we experienced in our entire set menu. Chef Sarkar doesn’t seem to give much importance to this now well-known, old and maligned, trend. “It’s become a commercial term. I learnt it in London and used to do it a lot. But now it’s just a part of the cuisine – at least in gastronomically-advanced countries. Indienne is a modern progressive cuisine. You will see some part of it there with some spherification, some gels, but it’s not something you see out loud. It’s just there.” He seems to have a spite with the term.
The 46-year-old chef does confess to have been inspired by Chef Heston Blumenthal in his early days, who pioneered molecular gastronomy in modern cooking. He looks up to Chef Jose Andres, and his humanitarian initiatives, more today.
Chef Sarkar has indeed chosen to play more with the ingredients, their flavours, textures, and their presentation, rather than with their chemistry. And when he does, it feels like a part of the food instead of it being a gimmick.
Dahi (Bhalla), the quintessential North Indian dish, was quite faithful to the original, not just in taste, but also in ingredients. The bhalla – lentil ball – was uber soft. The softest I have ever had! When we wondered this aloud to our server, Sam, he said that the kitchen keeps the ball soaked in yogurt for a precise amount of time, before taking it out, presenting it in the dish with yogurt jelly, potatoes, crisps, and dots of chutneys. The fresh beaten yogurt is poured in front of us, to make sure that the bhalla is soft, but not crumbled before being served. “They do amazing experimentation in the kitchen,” Sam says, including that they made an ice cream style recipe from the Bhalla batter for a special Mother’s Day menu. I am not sure if I heard it correctly, as unbelievable as it sounds.
“We are not adding wine to the butter chicken,” Chef Sarkar says. “We just adapt the widely used recipe. We are different, but not entirely different. We innovate, but try to keep the original flavors intact.”
Even my Avocado (Kebab) was not as simple it sounds. It came mixed and topped with ponkh, a young harvested green millet from Gujarat. Ponkh, according to Chef Sarkar is quite an underrated ingredient, along with jackfruit, and he highlights them both in his menu. The Jackfruit (Haleem) – a stew kind of dish – was warm, comforting, turning this humble, bland vegetable into a celebrity – thanks to the generous dollops of caramelized onions and frothy potato mousse on top. I slurped it all! There was even coriander ‘dust’ on top to add colour – perhaps a nod to the Indian tradition of topping everything with cilantro leaves (called coriander in India actually).
Looking around, I could see a mixed crowd of diners. Indians, Americans, children, aged. “I see three generations seated on the same table,” Chef Sarkar said. His staff is well-trained to cater to this diverse group of diners as well. They explain each dish, the origin of its ingredients, the history of the dish, all in one breath, as they pour and swirl the makhanis and chutneys. You counter question them, they will know the answer. Hailey, one of our servers, quietly replaced my empty jelly spoon that came with my mezcal cocktail, with a fresh one, after noticing my immense delight with its tangy flavours. Both Hailey and Sam made us feel special. They were animated, lively, knowledgeable.
The Scallop (Balchao) came topped with the Golden Kaluga caviar – a slightly larger, premium caviar. The Lamb Shawarma (with a pomegranate glaze) and Shammi Kabab was served with, among other things, a persimmon chutney. The persimmons are hung for days to dry before being made into a flavourful condiment. Chef Sarkar, this time dressed sharply in his chef uniform, proudly showed us some photos of the process.
His Chicken (Makhani) was quite a revelation. There was a simple chicken breast at the bottom, and there was chicken mousse at the top, surrounded by red pepper makhani sauce. It was truly Butter Chicken like the Chef had said, but presented innovatively. Now I know chicken can be made into a mousse! His Black Dairy Dal – essentially Dal Makhani – was better than Bukhara’s Dal Bukhara (sorry purists!). It had a just enough fiery after-taste.
Even the tiny treats that came in the end were transformed into unique, edible art objects. The humble sesame chikki had been flattened further – packing all that flavor into a razor thin, transparent crisp layer! And there was a tart with chai (yes, the Indian tea) reshaped into caviar style dots.
Chef Sarkar was right about his flavours. They are spicy, flavorful, very much like true Indian food. And not spiced with chilli, but with carefully integrated ingredients that enhance the natural flavours of things. Indian food in America tends to become over-bland or over-sweetened. Indienne was neither.
The paradox of the Chef
The very calm chef was recently nominated for James Beard Awards’ “Best Chef: Great Lakes” category in 2024. A high honour indeed, considering it is the Oscars of the food industry. Doing this interview just four days before the awards ceremony, he chooses to credit the people around him for the nomination, and share it with them: “I am so happy that I am in the final. It’s good enough to be in final. I am representing a group of people who are helping me every day to make this work, and that is exciting, I am happy that people are appreciating us. Even if we win, it’s not going to change anything. Of course, my CV will look good, but we will continue giving a good experience to people and making ourselves better.”
This globe-trotting Indian chef does take inspiration from home now. What was daily life before, he sees it with a new lens. “After my travels, when I went back to India, I started to put a lot of things into perspective,” Chef Sarkar says, referring to the cooking techniques his aunts used. There are a few other aspects he credits for his success, one of them being avoiding overconfidence. “Doesn’t matter how much you put in, or how good you are, because a lot of things work beyond our capability. So never get overconfident,” he says.
Another mantra he mentions is to never lose your cool. “Don’t just react all the time,” he explains. “Be patient and listen.” He seems to live by it as well. He refuses to comment on other Indian restaurants’ performance. He refuses to talk about his experiences at ROOH Chicago.
Being humble and honest is his third diktat for life. “There are people working with you. Alone, you’re not going to do anything, right? And they will only work with you if you can inspire them. They can make money anywhere, right? There’s no shortage of work. It’s not like 20 or 15 years ago. But if they see that what you are doing relates to what they are doing or want to do, you demonstrate something that inspired them, then they will be a part of your journey.”
This chef, who feeds others, has slashed his own calories. “I am a Bengali, and Bengalis eat rice and sugar. And I had to cut back on 95% of my rice and sugar for health reasons!” he laughs and says. So instead, his diet now includes boiled eggs and avocados. His favorite comfort food – khichdi – which is traditionally made with rice and lentils – has now transformed into a version with millets for him. That being said, he counts The Catbird Seat (Nashville), Cote Korean Steakhouse (NYC), and Asador Bastian (Chicago), as his favorite restaurants.
With all the Michelin stars, the fancy eateries and the posh restaurant empire around him, Chef Sarkar comes across as firmly grounded, and guarded. His paradox is probably that he doesn’t talk luxury, but certainly crafts it, executes it. He doesn’t wave his hands about dramatically, or brandishes his spatula around even in the kitchen (where I followed him after my dinner). He is calm. There is no grandeur on him, even though he is surrounded by it. He is not fancy, but dedicated to his fancy work. “How many people in this world really can do what they like to do, and do it their best? Maybe I’m lucky,” he concludes.
