Vijay Kumar: The Indian chef who took Tamil fare global and won a 'food Oscar'

BBC News

3 days ago

In Manhattan's West Village, where culinary trends can change with the seasons, Chef Vijay Kumar is shaping a quiet revolution. His 2025 James Beard Award win for Best Chef: New York State this month is more than just personal recognition - it marks a cultural inflection point. Chennai-based culinary historian Rakesh Raghunathan says: "Following in the footsteps of fellow Tamil-origin recipients like Raghavan Iyer and Padma Lakshmi, Vijay Kumar's recognition reflects a growing momentum for south Indian voices on the global culinary stage". "Tamil cuisine - along with Sri Lankan Tamil and other south Indian regional traditions - is increasingly being embraced by global diners as something refined, rich, and deeply rooted in culture."Born in the small farming village of Arasampatti, Madurai in southern Tamil Nadu, the 44-year-old Kumar has always cooked from memory - of forests and foraging, firewood stoves and his mother and grandmother serving meals made from scratch for the family.When he took the stage at the JB awards ceremony, he said "the food I grew up on, the food made with care, with fire, with soul is now taking the main stage". It was a moment of deep emotion and cultural pride for Kumar. "There is no such thing as a poor person's food, or a rich person's food. It's food. It's powerful. And the real luxury is to be able to connect with each other around the dinner table."
For Kumar, the win is a personal milestone but also a powerful act of visibility. "When I started cooking, I never thought a dark-skinned boy from Tamil Nadu could make it to a room like this," he said in his acceptance speech. It was therefore important for him to wear veshti, the traditional Tamil attire for men, for the black-tie James Beard ceremony as a nod to his roots.Recently, Kumar was trolled by a pair of influencers in New York. Quick to rise to his defence was Padma Lakshmi, cookbook author and culinary ambassador, who called the influencers out for their cultural insensitivity.Speaking to the BBC, Lakshmi said "Vijay's story is important not just for south Indian food but also as a story of someone who grew up with humble means and cooked with limited resources." "This resourcefulness has not only propelled his work ethic but enhanced his sense of flavour, ingredients and sense of the world. He is a beacon of hope to young people all over the world that if you trust and develop your senses and skills, you can go far in a creative career."Kumar's journey wasn't smooth to start with. Unable to afford engineering school in the big city, he chose culinary school instead - beginning his journey at Taj Connemara hotel in Chennai, cooking his way through cruise ships and kitchens, and eventually finding his promised land in America, working at Dosa in San Francisco. His real breakthrough came when he partnered with Roni Mazumdar and Chintan Pandya of Unapologetic Foods, a New York restaurant group, to open Semma - a Tamil slang word for "fantastic" in 2021.
The trio found a "shared sense of wanting to honour our heritage, to tell the world who we really are through our cuisine". "At that moment, it wasn't just about food, it was about identity," Mazumdar told the BBC. "For too long, Indian food in the US has lived under the veil of a manufactured, watered-down north-western lens. With Semma, we set out to pull back that curtain and share something more honest."Kumar jumped at the opportunity to share his cuisine with the world. "His eyes lit up when we started talking about the food we grew up eating, and that kind of food rarely makes it to restaurant menus," recalls Mazumdar.Kumar's strength lies in serving authentic village food that is seasonal, hyper-local, and built entirely from scratch. His farm-to-table approach, he says, was to cook the way "my mother and grandmother did". Semma, he adds, is a celebration of that simplicity.That simplicity resonates. Semma's menu defies the clichés that often define Indian food abroad. There's no butter chicken or naan here and Kumar's epiphany came with an unlikely encounter: French escargot. As a child, on days when rice was scarce, he would forage with his family for snails in the paddy fields, which would be cooked in a savoury tamarind sauce. Kumar admitted that he was ashamed of it as a boy as it "felt like food born of poverty - until I saw the pride with which the French serve escargot". Today, the dish, nathai pirattal, sits proudly on Semma's menu, reimagined not as a memory of scarcity, but as a symbol of resilience and cultural pride. Semma's menu - pepper rasam, tamarind crab, banana flower vadai, the ubiquitous dosa - offer an emotional connection for many diaspora diners, and a revelation for first-timers.
Kumar's intention to bring village-style Tamil food and showcase it in upscale spots and in the cut-throat New York restaurant space has won a long line of admirers. There's depth, regionality and a powerful emotional connection in this food. The cocktails are a nod to Tamil film stars like Rajnikanth and Silk Smitha, and the décor channels Chennai's warmth. Even the kitchen is a space of intention - cooks are asked to prepare food with "gratitude and mindfulness"."I invited him to curate a black-tie gala dinner for 650 guests at the Gold Gala in Los Angeles, and he made us all proud. A year later, people still talk about how incredible the food was," says Lakshmi, applauding Kumar's gift for bringing regional Indian cuisine to the most glamorous platforms.The awards and accolades feel like a natural progression of his journey. Semma is the first New York restaurant serving only south Indian cuisine to win a Michelin star and topped The New York Times's list for top 100 restaurants. And now the JBA for Kumar.In many ways, Kumar is not just serving food - he is serving memory, pride and a quiet revolution. His James Beard win is a recognition of his talent, but also an affirmation that regional Indian cuisine, with its bold spices and soulful simplicity, belongs at the centre of the global table.Kumar's win has piqued the "curiosity of young people from all over the Indian diaspora and instilled a greater pride in our food ways", says Lakshmi. "This will be his greatest legacy."Adds Mazumdar, "This win is a signal that regionality matters, and that our stories and our roots have value on the world stage."