Chef Jyoti Singh’s Bihari Chicken Curry: A story of roots, memory and modern Indian cooking

Tomatoes too are chosen with intent — the round variety, not the long hybrid ones most vendors sell. The garam masala is his father’s — ground in Bihar, dispatched to Goa and rationed carefully. These are not the preferences of a chef building a tasting menu but someone who learned to taste before he learned to cook.

Summer in his childhood meant his dadi’s house in Muzaffarpur and his nani’s, near Hajipur. The family made the trip once a year during school vacations, and that food became the earliest archive Singh still cooks from. “In the village, men would come carrying live quails (bater) tied to a bamboo frame with strings,” he recalls. If the bird was available that week, his grandmother would cook that. If not, it was chicken curry; always cooked over wood fire, in mustard oil or ghee.

The smoked Naga chilli in today’s curry is the only departure from the original recipe, an addition he credits his wife, who is from Nagaland, with. “I now prefer it over the regular chilli powder. It has a smokiness and isn’t too spicy,” he says, almost with disbelief over how neatly their Bihar-Nagaland marriage managed to land in a single pot.

The curry is deliberately restrained — with little masala. “That’s the beauty of cooking whole chicken. The fat enriches the gravy.” The colour, he says, will tell you it is homemade. He is not being modest. He means it as the highest compliment.

Bihari chicken curry by Chef Jyoti Singh

Singh graduated in 2006 from Institute of Hotel Management, Goa, an impulsive decision, considering he had an AIEEE rank in hand. “I thought if I don’t enjoy it, I’ll go back.” He didn’t. What followed were years of practice in patience: Trident, the Oberoi Centre of Learning and Development, postings across Jaipur, Delhi, Bengaluru and Kolkata; then Egypt and Indonesia, where he was heading a restaurant and training teams until a massive earthquake in 2018 brought him back to India. Hotel life, though, had begun to feel like a fixed orbit. “Same hierarchy. Same structure. I needed new learning.”

So he spent 2019 travelling with no particular agenda except eating. He visited Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Bihar, Jharkhand, Assam and Nagaland, spending nearly a month in each state. “I was travelling to eat,” says Singh. O Pedro (Mumbai) followed, then consulting, then The Second House in Saligao in 2023, a restaurant whose philosophy he had been circling for years without knowing it.

Meanwhile, in the now, the curry simmers, Singh kneads the dough for the parathas. Whole wheat, no measurement needed. Into the paneer bhurji go fresh peas — “whatever is fresh, put it in” — and the kitchen takes on the rhythm of a meal that has nothing to prove.

At The Second House and at Cafe Lento, which opened in August 2025, this is the register he works in: familiar names, reframed quietly. Butter Garlic Mushroom is a dish that was on every continental menu in India years ago. At The Second House, it is reclaimed using multiple mushroom varieties, a two-day mushroom stock reduction as sauce and stracciatella cheese instead of cream. The name stays. The dish though is entirely different. “People think they know what they are ordering. And then they taste it and it’s different.”

At Cafe Lento, croissants are relearned; salmon is cured and smoked in-house; duck, chicken and pork sausages are made from scratch. The McPav is inspired by the first McChicken he ate in Mumbai in 2006. The crab omelette is finished with a soft French fold — a technique from his Oberoi years —and filled generously because he saw no reason not to.

The table at home is laid simply. Chicken curry, paneer bhurji, jeera-aloo, dal, rice and triangular crispy parathas. He jokes when asked for the chicken curry recipe. “I’m going to sell this chicken. How can I give it away?” The colour tells you what it is, he says again. Homemade.

When we ask how often he cooks at home, the 41-year-old laughs. “Food cooked by someone else always tastes better, no?” He cooks on his days off. It is mostly eggs. If he is alone, he doesn’t bother with elaborate meals. Today, though, he has cooked with the same attention he brings to a two-day mushroom reduction. Undivided.

There is a thread across everything Singh cooks — the curry, the croissant, the jackfruit quesadilla, the crab omelette — he begins with something borrowed and then makes it his own, just like Naga chilli powder in his Bihari chicken curry.

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Bihari-Style Chicken Curry

Ingredients
l Chicken – 1.2 kg
l Onions – 500 g (sliced thick)
l Ginger-garlic paste – 100 g
l Mustard oil – 100-150 ml
l Bay leaves – 2
l Green cardamom – 4-5 pods
l Cinnamon – 1-inch piece
l Black peppercorns – 10-15
l Cumin seeds – 1 tsp
l Turmeric powder – 1 tsp
l Red chilli powder – 2 tsp
l Naga chilli powder/ Kashmiri
red chilli powder- ½ tsp
l Homemade garam masala – 1 tsp
l Fresh coriander leaves – chopped
l Salt and lime juice – to taste

Method
1. Heat mustard oil in a heavy-bottomed pan until it reaches smoking point, then let it cool slightly to remove the raw pungency
2. Add whole spices: bay leaf, cardamom, cinnamon, black pepper and cumin.
Let them crackle
3. Add sliced onions and cook until light golden brown. Add ginger-garlic paste and sauté well until the raw smell disappears. Add turmeric powder and mix
4. Add the chicken and cook on medium-high heat, stirring to coat it well with the masala. After 5-10 minutes of roasting, add garam masala, red chilli powder and Naga chilli powder/ Kashmiri red chilli powder, and let it cook. Don’t add water, this preparation is similar in spirit to a kosha-style curry — slow-cooked, reduced and intensely flavoured. Cover and cook for 30-35 minutes, stirring every 3-4 minutes. The trapped steam helps cook the chicken and release moisture naturally
5. Once cooked, garnish with chopped coriander, and finish with a squeeze of
lime slice