🇮🇳 India · Indian cuisine · b. 1974
The Delhi chef of Indian Accent — credited with putting Indian fine dining on the World's 50 Best list.
Manish Mehrotra is an Indian chef and the culinary director of Indian Accent, the contemporary Indian restaurant group with branches in Delhi, New York and Mumbai. The Delhi original — opened in 2009 at the Manor hotel in Friends Colony and now at The Lodhi — was the first Indian restaurant on the Asian continent to enter the Asia's 50 Best Restaurants top 10, and from 2015 to 2018 was the only Indian restaurant on The World's 50 Best Restaurants list.
Mehrotra was born in Patna, Bihar, in 1974 and graduated from the Institute of Hotel Management in Mumbai. He spent the first part of his career not in Indian cooking but in pan-Asian — at the Oriental Octopus in Delhi and in London, where he ran the kitchens at Tamarai and HKK. He took over Indian Accent at the Manor hotel in Delhi in 2009 with a clear, then-unusual brief: take the regional Indian repertoire seriously as a fine-dining cuisine, but allow its ingredients and techniques to talk freely to the rest of Asia and to Europe.
The restaurant's menu is famous for crossbreed dishes that have become canonical in their own right — blue cheese naan, soy-cured kebabs, dosa stuffed with wild mushroom and water chestnut, ghee-roast lamb with vindaloo jus and malabar parotta — and for treating Indian breads and pickles as central rather than supporting elements. Indian Accent has since opened in New York (2016, at the Le Parker Méridien — closed during the pandemic and reopened in a different location) and in Mumbai (2021).
Inventive Indian, not fusion. Mehrotra is firm that what Indian Accent does is not 'fusion' — it is Indian cooking with the same intellectual freedom that any other major world cuisine takes for granted. Every dish must remain legibly Indian in its spice grammar and flavour balance; only then is the kitchen free to import an ingredient or a technique from outside the subcontinent.
Flagship since 2017; Asia's 50 Best top 10; the only Indian restaurant on The World's 50 Best 2015–2018.
Opened 2016 at the Le Parker Méridien; reopened post-pandemic in 2024 at a new midtown location.
Mumbai branch, opened 2021 at the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre's hospitality wing.
Casual sister restaurant; modern Indian comfort food.
These recipes from our database reflect the indian cooking tradition that Manish works in. They are not direct reproductions of Manish's copyrighted recipes, but traditional dishes inspired by the same culinary heritage.
“Indian food does not need to apologise for being Indian.”
— Indian Accent Restaurant Cookbook (2014)
“Fusion is when you don't know what you are cooking. We always know.”
— Interview, The Hindu
Graduates from the Institute of Hotel Management, Mumbai.
Joins Old World Hospitality in Delhi as a pan-Asian chef at the Oriental Octopus.
Moves to London to run the kitchens at Tamarai (Drury Lane) and later HKK.
Returns to Delhi to take over the kitchen of the newly opened Indian Accent at the Manor hotel, Friends Colony.
Publishes the Indian Accent Restaurant Cookbook; named Chef of the Year by Conde Nast Traveller India.
Indian Accent enters The World's 50 Best Restaurants list at #77 in the extended ranking and Asia's 50 Best top 10 — the only Indian restaurant of the period.
Opens Indian Accent New York at the Le Parker Méridien.
Indian Accent moves to The Lodhi hotel in New Delhi; ranked #4 on Asia's 50 Best Restaurants — the highest position ever achieved by an Indian restaurant at the time.
Opens Indian Accent Mumbai at the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre hospitality wing in Bandra-Kurla Complex.
Reopens Indian Accent New York in a new midtown Manhattan location after its pandemic-era closure.
Since 2017 Indian Accent Delhi has been located at The Lodhi hotel on Lodhi Road in central New Delhi. The original 2009 restaurant was at the smaller Manor hotel in Friends Colony, on the other side of the city, but the operation moved to The Lodhi for capacity reasons after entering the Asia's 50 Best top 10.
Yes — for the period 2015 to 2018 Indian Accent Delhi was the only restaurant in India on The World's 50 Best Restaurants list, and Mehrotra was widely credited with single-handedly putting Indian fine dining on the global tasting-menu map. Since 2019 Bombay Canteen, Masque and Avartana have joined Indian Accent on regional lists.
Mehrotra deliberately resists the term 'fusion'. His position is that every dish at Indian Accent must remain unambiguously Indian in its spice grammar and balance — only after that is satisfied can the kitchen freely import an ingredient (blue cheese, foie gras, soy) or a technique from outside India. The cuisine, in his framing, is Indian first and inventive second.
Yes. Indian Accent opened in New York in 2016 at the Le Parker Méridien in midtown Manhattan, where it was the highest-rated Indian restaurant in the city. The original location closed during the pandemic; Mehrotra reopened the New York operation in a new midtown location in 2024.
Blue cheese naan is one of Indian Accent's longest-running signature dishes — a soft tandoor-baked naan stuffed with crumbled blue cheese and finished with chilli oil. It is the dish most often cited as the moment Mehrotra's 'inventive Indian' style first entered the international restaurant conversation.
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