Inside Raga, Gaggan Anand’s long-awaited return to India, with a plus 1

The next day, Zorawar asked Gaggan to come check out the site. Gaggan came down within days and loved it. The rest, as Zorawar puts it, is history. There was no contract, no signed papers, just a handshake, followed by a trip to Japan together to source custom cutlery and crockery, but also realising that they liked working together.

That instinct — trust built before the paperwork — runs through how Raga came together, including who is actually cooking. Because this time, Gaggan isn’t entirely behind the pass. At Raga, he’s chosen to be the shadow.

A street food course featuring a creamy seemingly-walnut dish filled with brown chutney, a pani puri disguised as egg, and an aloo bonda sandwich. (Express Photo)

Gaggan’s Right Hand

“It took me 10 years, I couldn’t strike the right balance,” he shares about his many attempts to open a restaurant in India. “But now I am also letting my right hand leave Bangkok to be in Delhi.”

His right hand is Rydo Anton, the Indonesian-born chef who joined Gaggan around 14 years ago and is currently the executive chef at his Delhi restaurant. In an earlier interaction this year, Gaggan shared that when he made Rydo the head chef, “He proved everything I thought about him. Then there was a point when I thought he might leave me. I have a co-dependency issue. So I thought, what should I do?” When conversations with Zorawar started moving, Gaggan told Rydo: “Let’s open a restaurant and we will be equal partners.”

Rydo is co-founder and chef at Raga and is leading the kitchen. “I have shared the stage where he was once a shadow, but now I am the shadow. That’s what Raga is,” says Gaggan, dressed not in uniform but in his usual cheeky style, wearing a T-shirt that says “Everything sucks”, moving from table to table chatting with people.

It’s there in the name as well. Raga, in Indian classical music, is a framework for both composition and improvisation, and here it also stands for the initials of Rydo Anton and Gaggan Anand. But Rydo resists reading it as pure ego. “There’s a deeper reason for it,” he says. “In my language, Bahasa Indonesia, there’s a phrase, ‘Jiwa Raga,’ which means body and soul. I didn’t want a name that was just the two of us, there’s too much ego in that.”

Raga is designed by Gaggan’s own architect, as a box within a box, its interiors clad in concrete and lit low and warm. The colours come through in the food and crockery, and the beautiful green table top. It opens to the public on Wednesday, August 26, for dinner only — two seatings of 18 each, six days a week — with 22 courses on offer, more than any other tasting menu currently running in India. Twenty-two, Gaggan says, is his lucky number, tied to his birthday. There is also a private dining room, but there’s time before it opens to guests.

The Experience

The meal opens light: a slice of orange dusted with seasoning, then a gulaab khatta — a spin on kala khatta — with cherry sorbet and a disc of mangosteen pulp meant to be scooped like ice cream. Then the “monsoon glass papad”, built from dehydrated tapioca pearls, two green chutneys, okra leaf and a compression of cucumber laid over the top like a veil.

Gaggan’s famed yoghurt explosion follows, then the dish the servers won’t let you see coming: a creamy walnut filled with brown chutney, meant to be eaten in one bite while you guess what it is. We won’t give away the answer, but the lingering mustard note that follows was one of the meal’s high points. The first several courses arrive in quick succession, almost bombarding you with texture and colour, before the pace deliberately slows.

Desserts open with another signature, “Lick It Up” features a Biscoff stem, coconut-pandan base, and charred pomegranate on top. A kesar-pista soft serve follows, made on a machine that reportedly cost fifteen lakh rupees: a hearty, unapologetically Indian ice-cream course. (Express Photo)

There’s pani puri disguised as egg, and an aloo bonda sandwich that is a small masterclass in sleight of hand — everything a bonda should be, except the toasted “bread” on top isn’t bread, but onion meringue. The charcoal course, a long-running signature, changes its filling every time it’s served; this iteration uses local chillies, grilled and stuffed with cheese, warm enough that the kitchen warns you before you bite in.

The soup course lands especially well given Delhi’s current weather: a truffle-and-potato espuma topped with bubu arare (Japanese puffed rice) and a genmaicha broth meant to be sipped like a cappuccino. The truffle gives the soup depth, while the herbaceous oil cuts through it. Then there’s a cold, south Indian-inflected curry topped with “snow” made from its own sauce, and a kachori filled with sweetened onions and green paste, and donut with the most delicious baingan bharta we have had.

The fish course — usually bhetki (Asian sea bass), lifted with mustard — arrives in a fish-shaped bowl. The vegetarian version, paneer layered with butternut squash in a Bengali mustard marinade, was the one course that didn’t quite land; it needed something sharper to cut through the creaminess and sweetness.

As at Gaggan Bangkok, the cutlery, crockery and serve ware is sourced from Japan, down to a custom bento-style bowl-and-plate set carrying Indian floral motifs, used for the main course of sheermal, tabak maaz, nalli nihari and brain pepper fry. For vegetarians, this is replaced with jackfruit curry and a deep-fried layered potato dish. A machine now gets the nalli nihari done without any greasiness in a fraction of the usual time. “It usually takes eight hours plus, with this machine, two to three,” Rydo says.

Raga brings together world-renowned chef Gaggan Anand and restaurateur Zorawar Kalra, with Gaggan joined by his protege Rydo Anton as co-founder and chef. (Photo: Special Arrangement)

As for the “brain” course, the one Gaggan has, at various points, told diners is made from rats, it’s actually cauliflower, styled to look uncannily like the real thing.

The meal winds down with passion fruit-and-mango granita and a chamorro sauce, meant to evoke fruit carts, before dessert opens with another signature, “Lick It Up” with a Biscoff stem, coconut-pandan base and a charred pomegranate layer at the top.

A kesar-pista soft serve follows, (made on a machine that reportedly cost Rs 15 lakh) a hearty, unapologetically Indian ice-cream course that may or may not belong at a fine-dining table, though Gaggan has never much cared for that rule. It closes on petit four: a mohabbat-ka-sharbat jelly, almond lemon malpua, a pineapple jelly candy and, finally, paan.

The Pricing

At Rs 11,111 plus taxes, Raga is, by some distance, the most expensive tasting menu in India.

But how does this pricing work when the restaurant has invested in custom-made crockery from Japan, specialised equipment and the training required to deliver a 22-course menu, which means 792 plates if serving 36 people a night, and has 3:1 staff to guest ratio? “You can always increase a price, you can’t really reduce one,” Zorawar says. “I think this price is fair. With alcohol, it’ll run above 11,000. It’s important for great food to be at least partially accessible. I am not saying this is cheap, it’s premium. But you can see where the money’s gone: into training the staff, into the experience.”

The final figure came down to a small negotiation. Gaggan wanted it higher, Zorawar talked him down, eventually settling on 11,111 partly because “one” is considered lucky.

A custom bento-style bowl-and-plate set, patterned with Indian floral motifs, carries the main course: sheermal, tabak maaz, nalli nihari, and a brain pepper fry — swapped for jackfruit curry and a deep-fried layered potato dish for vegetarians. The “brain,” which Gaggan has at various points told diners is made from rats, is actually cauliflower, styled to look uncannily real. (Express Photo)

A homecoming

Ask Gaggan why he chose Delhi for his return, and he answers, “Because this is where I left cooking. It was here that I quit cooking in a hotel, and I started hating cooking. And now, 25 years later, here I am to prove myself.”

But he is serving the Delhi he sees now, not the city and its memories he left behind. “Delhi has changed a lot. The sense of entitlement has gone,” he says. “When you ask someone in Delhi where they want to travel, they say Japan or Korea, Mexico, Peru. The world isn’t what they used to think it was, and that’s changing everything in India — our apps, our clothes, our fashion. So I’m changing it with food too.”

Unlike at Gaggan where he banned phones, he is not against people taking photographs at Raga, but he won’t allow flash or additional lighting, and limits diners to one smoking break to ensure continuity. “I want people to forget time and just enjoy the food,” he says.

If Raga is a homecoming, it isn’t a nostalgic one. Gaggan is not looking back at the Delhi he left; he is looking at the city it has become.

Whether Delhi’s fine-dining audience takes to 22 courses, prepaid seatings and a price tag built for the history books remains to be seen. But Zorawar is bullish, buoyed by the initial reception. It is sold-out for the coming days, while an insider says some of the city’s top companies are keen to book the entire space.