At the Indian restaurant Badmaash, which opened its third Los Angeles location last week, sure, you’ll find Butter Chicken and Chicken Tikka Masala on the menu.
But you’ll also find a Punjabi-spiced variation of steak frites, with fries dusted with paprika (and maybe poutine). There’s a lamb burger so that (typically more open-minded) women can say to their (typically less adventurous) men, “Look, honey, there’s a burger on the menu,” said co-founder Nakul Mahendro.
This can be preceded by a bourbon-based cocktail spiced with Madeira, lemon and housemade date jam. Dessert might be ice cream sandwiches made with Parle-G biscuits (iconic in India for dipping in tea) and Blue Bunny vanilla ice cream.
In other words, it’s not your typical curry house. And that’s the point.
Badmaash means scoundrel or hooligan in Hindi, though it’s a term of endearment. The concept is so named because it was meant to break rules.
Mahendro doesn’t want Badmaash to be thought of as an Indian restaurant at all, really. When he, his brother and father first opened Badmaash in 2013, they didn’t just set out to break the mold of what a traditional Indian restaurant had become in the U.S., they wanted to “blow it up with TNT, like Wiley Coyote” of Roadrunner cartoon fame.
“Your idea of an Indian restaurant is fucking horrible,” he said of Americans in general. “Don’t put me in that box.”
The Parle-G ice cream sandwiches at Badmaash. | Photo by Joseph Duarte.
Badmaash, however, is part of a growing wave of modern Indian concepts that are redefining the genre in the U.S.
It’s a movement that has been gaining momentum for years. But 2026 promises to be the year when a stunning variety of “progressive” Indian restaurants takes the spotlight.
Acclaimed concepts are arriving from the United Kingdom, where Indian cuisine has a long (and sometimes fraught) history, as if to suggest that Americans are finally sophisticated enough for modern Indian fare.
From London comes the beloved Dishoom, for example, which is on deck to open in New York City later this year. Part of a 12-unit chain in the U.K., Dishoom reportedly won an investment from private-equity firm L Catterton last year in a deal that valued the concept at nearly $400 million.
Also from the U.K., JKS Restaurants brought its Gymkhana concept to the Aria Resort & Casino in Las Vegas in December. The group also opened its Punjabi-focused concept Ambassadors Clubhouse in New York earlier this year.
Meanwhile, U.S.-based operators are riding the momentum.
Michelin-starred chef Sujan Sarkar is bringing his Chicago fine-dining concept Indienne to New York City this May to Henry Hall in Hudson Yards. He will later follow that with a cocktail bar called Apas, and a British-Indian chophouse called Elder.
Pani Puri eclairs at Indienne. | Photo by Neil John Burger
Earlier this year, Sarkar also opened the new Ayra in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with local operators Ravi Jeyaraman and Mayil Rajendran (Lime & Lemon Indian Grill). And Sarkar plans to open a second location of his casual regional-Indian concept Nadu (which means “homeland”) in Phoenix later this year.
That’s also where Indibar by Masti Hospitality opened in 2025 with chef partners Nigel Lobo and Ajay Singh. This fall, Indibar will add a restaurant-within-a-restaurant called Lehr into Indibar (where private dining used to be) featuring a 10-course tasting menu designed to take up to 22 guests on a journey through India.
Indibar in Phoenix opened in 2025. | Photo courtesy of Indibar.
Rivaaz Hospitality, the group behind Rooh Progressive Indian in San Francisco brought its Palo Alto concept Fitoor to Los Angeles in 2024. And Rivaaz, which also has the concepts Alora and Pippal, last month launched a national luxury catering division to bring its modern take on Indian food to weddings, corporate and other large-scale events. (Sarkar is the former chef of Rooh, but is no longer affiliated with the group.)
Mahendro of Badmaash said it’s the continuation of a new interpretation of Indian fare in the U.S. that was arguably started by Floyd Cardoz at the 1998 restaurant Tabla, which was part of Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group. It earned three stars from the New York Times, but later closed in 2010.
“That restaurant was 20 years before its time,” said Mahendro.
And there’s still an uphill climb, he added.
Despite the acclaim won by high-end New York restaurants like the Junoon, Bungalow or Tamarind, the U.S. has yet to produce an Indian chef with the name recognition of, say, the Japanese chef/restaurateur Nobu Matsuhisa or (British/Chinese) Michael Chow of Mr. Chow, he said.
“The Indian chef is not as respected as the Italian chef or the French chef,” he said. “When I say ‘three-star Michelin chef,’ you still picture a French dude in chef whites.”
How these “progressive” Indian concepts seek to break the mold, of course, varies widely.
New York-based Unapologetic Foods, for example, leans into American familiarity with Butter Chicken at the concept Adda, which offers tableside presentation of the “full Butter Chicken experience,” featuring locally sourced chicken, a trio of house-churned butters, charcoal-smoked organic tomatoes and the restaurant’s signature black daal.
At the same time, the group is not shy about introducing dishes less familiar to many American diners, like the Bheja Masala (goat brain, steamed egg, lamb butter and pao) at Adda, or Gurda Kapoora (goat kidney and testicles) at Dhamaka.
Mahendro at Badmaash calls operators like Unapologetic Foods “true to it.”
He’s clearer about what such operators are not, which is the stereotypical mom-and-pop Indian with burgundy carpeting and a $6.99 all-you-can-eat lunch buffet.
“On the front, it says Akhmed’s Fine Dining, or Delhi House Fine Dining,” he said. “But how is this fine dining? What is fine about this experience?”
At the stereotypical Indian restaurant in the U.S., servers likely have no clue what’s in the food or how to give proper service, he said.
“The food itself is not fine. It’s not refined. It’s not even good,” he said, rant continuing. The ingredients used are cheap. Cooks are probably former engineers who don’t know how to properly “bloom” spices to bring out their flavor, so they just use more.
That’s where Americans get the stereotype that Indian food makes them feel sick, said Mahendro.
“You get ‘Delhi belly’ from most of the Indian restaurants that didn’t have a chef,” he said. “They just had an entrepreneurial dude who needed to provide for their family.”
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, he is quick to add. “I love, love, love the immigrant story.”
But Mahendro, who grew up partly in Toronto, wanted something better—a restaurant that was Indian but where you could take a hot date or your boss.
That didn’t exist in Los Angeles, when he, his brother Arjun Mahendro and his father Pawan Mahendro decided to create it themselves in 2013.
Nakul Mahendro (left) with his father Pawan and brother Arjun. | Photo by Diego Andrade.
“We were the ones that kicked the door open,” said Nakul. “We literally jumped off the cliff thinking, ‘Is this umbrella going to open so we can land safely?’”
Nakul and Arjun grew up in the restaurant industry. Their father, now 72, had a long career as a chef—he’s still in the kitchen at Badmaash, “slamming pans like he’s 25,” said Nakul.
When Badmaash first opened, the goal was simply to “have the best God damned restaurant that happened to have Indian food,” said Nakul. On the menu, they’d use the hashtag #fuckyourfavoriteIndianrestaurant, or #wearenotanIndianretaurant.
The music is old-school rap, not twanging sitar. The design is boldly colorful, with art that evokes bangles on a woman’s wrist or flowing saris. Bollywood classics are projected on the wall. (“The translations are hilarious,” Nakul said.)
Menus give detailed description of ingredients, and servers are trained at a level akin to the Hillstone Group, he said, long said to represent the gold standard for service.
The newest Badmaash location opened in Venice Beach last week, and the Mahendros have taken it up a notch, with a full bar and a lively cocktail program.
The newest Badmaash opened in the Abbot Kinney neighborhood of Los Angeles near Venice Beach. | Photo by Joseph Duarte.
The family also recently opened an outlet in the Pacific Electric music venue in Chinatown. It’s called Secret Indian Food Window by Badmaash, with a simple menu of Indian tacos: Butter Chicken, Short Rib Curry and Indian Beef Chorizo. (Nakul tips his hat to Roy Choi and the concept Koji, once known for Korean tacos.)
Sarkar, who is originally from Kolkata by lived for years in London cooking European cuisine, also has a modern concept in Los Angeles called Baar Baar, where he plays with cross-culture dishes, like a Kashmiri Duck (Birria) Taco, and an edamame and green chickpea hummus called Avocado Bhel.
Baar Baar first opened in New York in 2017, Sarkar said. But he closed the concept there when the lease ended. He also has the restaurant Tiya in San Francisco, which his brother runs.
Meanwhile, Sarkar said he sees the customers at his restaurants changing. It’s not primarily people from Southeast Asia or the subcontinent anymore, but all sorts from different cultures and backgrounds.
“Something good is happening,” said Sarkar. “You’ll see it evolve and get better.”