The rise of upscale Indian restaurants in the U.S.

Executive Chef Vikas Khanna has plated hundreds of thousands of dinners over the past 20 years — and he’s seen firsthand just how much Indian cuisine has evolved in the U.S.

Khanna, a world-renowned Indian restaurateur, created Junoon, his high-end Indian restaurant in New York City, more than a decade ago to wade deeper into sophisticated Indian dining, ultimately earning a Michelin star for the restaurant — one of the first Indian restaurants to earn the distinction.

As an immigrant in a post-9/11 America, Khanna said his bosses early in his career had been hesitant to branch out and experiment deeper with the broad canvas of Indian cuisine. Instead, he stuck to what he knew worked for the American palette: stereotypical menus and flavors like butter chicken and tikka masala.

But when American chef Anthony Bourdain visited Junoon for the first time, Khanna said he got the wakeup call of his career.

“He said, ‘I don’t understand why you guys want to camouflage your food to please the Western world,'” Khanna told CNBC. “He was saying, ‘You need to patronize the cuisine.’ And that became the foundation of Bungalow in many ways.”

Bungalow, Khanna’s next and highly popular venture in New York, is one of a growing number of Indian upscale and fine-dining restaurants popping up in the U.S. What was once takeout menus and buffets, Khanna said, has transformed into a business segment aiming to rival that of Italian and French cuisine and is garnering growing interest by the day.

According to Jimmy Rizvi, Khanna’s business partner at Bungalow, reservations for the restaurant sell out within 30 to 90 seconds of going live, with nightly waitlists averaging more than 1,000 people. The restaurant opened less than two years ago but consistently serves 300 to 400 dinners each night, becoming a top 10 restaurant in New York City on reservations platform Resy, Rizvi said.

“I definitely think that there’s a knowledge base that’s increasing; there’s more awareness with Indian food,” Rizvi, who also owns the restaurant Gupshup, told CNBC. “And there’s different cuisines within the Indian cuisine … that people are getting aware about.”

Khanna, who has been in the American restaurant scene for more than two decades, said he’s seen the entire landscape shift from “cheap food and curry houses” to sophisticated sit-down establishments.

Fine dining overall has seen a significant upswing over the past few years, Circana foodservice analyst David Portalatin told CNBC, as a post-pandemic appetite for a dining experience beyond just food has seen a boom.

Despite macroeconomic pressure with inflation and a pullback in consumer spending, Portalatin said customer visits to fine dining restaurants in July were up 5% year-over-year.

And while growing American interest in global cuisines has taken off, the Indian American population has also mirrored that growth. According to the Pew Research Center, the Indian population in the U.S. has increased by roughly 3.1 million, growing about 174% since 2000.

That population has also seen a rise in affluence, making a high median household income of more than $151,000 in 2023, compared with just a median of over $105,000 for Asian American households overall, according to Pew.

As reservations at Indian restaurants begin to sell out even faster, investors are also looking to secure a seat at the table.

Just this month, popular U.K. Indian restaurant chain Dishoom gained private equity backing as it prepares to scale to the U.S. next year.

L Catterton, backed by LVMH, announced it was acquiring a minority stake for an undisclosed amount in Dishoom, marking the restaurant group’s first outside investment. The firm adds Dishoom to its growing slate of restaurant investments, including Japanese Kobe beef chain Kisshokichi and Spanish casual dining brand Goiko.

The new deal reportedly values the restaurant at roughly $400 million. L Catterton and Dishoom did not respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.

Roni Mazumdar, with the James Beard Award-winning Indian restaurant Semma, said he’s seen a direct increase in investor interest as upscale Indian restaurants have boomed over the past few years.

Unapologetic Foods — the company behind many popular New York restaurants including Semma, Dhamaka, Adda and more — is having “continuous conversations” with outside investors, Mazumdar told CNBC, but even having those talks marks a significant change from when the group first entered the restaurant scene.

“I don’t think anyone saw Indian cuisine as a viable option until now,” Mazumdar said. “There are folks who we have consistent dialogues with who I don’t think five years ago would have even thought about the idea of, ‘Oh, it could be an interesting business model to look at.'”

Mazumdar said the landscape is “shifting rapidly” as more investors take notice.

“I wouldn’t call this a trend,” he added. “To take one of the oldest cuisines in the world – I think it’s an inevitability. It’s a matter of time.”

The Indian Restaurant Association of America identified hyper-regional flavors as one of its top 2025 Indian restaurant trends as chefs dig into the hundreds of local cuisines that dot the subcontinent.

Each of the restaurants from Mazumdar and Unapologetic Foods Chef Chintan Pandya, including Semma, emphasizes regional cuisines, rather than the typical northwestern Indian menus of decades past.

“I think we see a very interesting pattern where there’s a sense of curiosity towards finding out what a community is about through the lens of food,” Mazumdar said. “And I don’t think 20 years ago that was the case.”

Semma, for example, which was ranked No. 1 on The New York Times’ 2025 best restaurants list, explores the cuisine of South India, specifically the state of Tamil Nadu.

“I think one of the glorifying reasons that Semma is doing insanely great or something path-breaking is because it touches that nerve of Indian food which is cooked in India,” Pandya said. “That’s the entire belief, or the standard, or the vision of our company, where we will touch and cook the actual Indian food which we ourselves love to eat.”

Avtar Walia, the owner of Tamarind in Tribeca, has been in the American restaurant scene for decades. When he first immigrated to America in the ’70s, he couldn’t figure out why Indian restaurants weren’t at the same level as Italian and French restaurants.

By adding in more regional dishes and classic Indian street food, Walia said he began to see Indian restaurants — including his own eateries — change from typical buffets to sleek, elegant dining.

“From the last 47 years, I still follow the same pattern. Every month, month and a half, I change my lunch menu,” Walia said. “We take one of the regions … so that people can try different dishes, authentic dishes, and they don’t have to go anywhere else. And this worked very well for me.”

Walia estimated that nearly 95% of his clientele are regulars, with his restaurant becoming a staple for Wall Street business meetings.

And for Khanna over at Bungalow, the lines outside the restaurant just keep getting longer.

His rattan chairs have seated famed Indian celebrities like members of India’s billionaire Ambani family and Bollywood stars, as well as American bigwigs like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who visited the restaurant last year.

“When he came, he kept saying, ‘I know why every Indian in Seattle is on the phones at 8 a.m. PT to snag a reservation, because for them, this is not just visiting a restaurant — it’s a pilgrimage back home,'” Khanna said. “And that really stayed with me.”