Chef Adwait Anantwar: 5 Dishes That Shaped My Life

Three years after launching Inja, Chef Adwait Anantwar has bid the acclaimed New Delhi-based restaurant adieu. The award-winning menu he created there has its roots in his mother’s kitchen, where, as a boy, he would escape the tedium of homework and lessons.

Early experiments with cooking and a curious palette, attuned to distinct flavours, further shaped his approach. A self-proclaimed rebel in the kitchen, Anantwar has drawn on the familiar to create dishes that are unusual yet memorable.

I was a vegetarian while growing up, and my favourite dish to order was palak paneer whenever we ate out. My mother would try and make it at home, but the saag would be almost black to look at and never came out that well. Finally, at one of the small restaurants we used to frequent in Nagpur, I walked up to the chef, who I remember was from Uttarakhand, and asked him for his recipe. He was kind enough to share it. His recipe helped me make a delicious palak paneer which was a pleasing, vibrant green, had a distinct flavour of burnt garlic and was enhanced by the chef’s secret ingredient, which was kasoori methi, an unfamiliar herb in our Maharashtrian home.

The Palak Paneer Sarada on the menu at Inja is a take on those flavours. It is in the form of a salad, with a textural and visual play on palak paneer.

Shrikhand and Amarkhand are the taste of Indian summers for me. Even now, when I go home, my mother makes these and keeps the two yoghurt-based Maharashtrian desserts frozen in the fridge for me.

I decided to add an amarkhand to my dessert menu, but with a Japanese twist. My amarkhand kakigori is a multi-layered pudding where we do a base of almond cake, add a mango and yoghurt amarkhand on top, and cover this with shaved mango ice flakes, using the Japanese kakigori machine, which gives it a fluffy snow-like texture. The final flourish on top is a blowtorched Swiss-style meringue and pieces of fresh mango.

My aunt (masi), my mother’s sister, makes the best rasam. It’s peppery, tangy and super comforting, like a warm hug. I experienced the same feeling of warmth years later in Hong Kong, where I tasted chawanmushi, a delicate Japanese egg custard, for the first time. It is not just the taste but the way food makes you feel that makes a dish memorable.

I have tried to marry these flavour profiles and invoke the same sensation through my Lobster Rasam Chawanmushi. Drawing from the crab nandu rasam that they make in Tamil Nadu, I make the egg custard with eggs whipped together with a rasam-like broth of lobster and South Indian herbs, replacing the Japanese dashi stock. The steamed custard is then served with a lobster tail poached in rasam butter and sprinkled with drumstick seeds.

I remember this family visit to Vaishno Devi as a child and driving through Himachal. We ate this delicious fruit chaat from a roadside vendor, which was served on these big green leaves. What stood out was the chakotra [grapefruit] added to it and these tiny black seeds sprinkled on top that gave the dish a unique flavour. Years later, one of my restaurant kitchen staff, who was a Pahadi, made a simple potato dish flavoured with the same seeds. They’re called jakhiya and are a common Pahadi spice.

The taste was tucked away somewhere in the flavour library of my mind and came back to me. It’s the inspiration behind my Shiso Leaf Tuna Tartare Pomelo Chaat. I make a tuna tartare with elements of chaat like coriander oil, yuzu dressing, fresh pomelo and puffed rice. This is served on tempura-batter-fried shiso leaves, which is an ode to palak patta chaat, and finally finished off with a sprinkling of jakhiya seeds.

When my dad was a college student in Nagpur, he used to stay at the Ramakrishna Mission. A lot of bael [wood apple] fruit used to come as an offering at the temple there. Since the students had to do chores to earn their stay, one of the things my father learnt was to make bael sherbet flavoured with tulsi leaves. Later, he used to make it for us at home too, sometimes, and it’s a taste that stayed with me.

Years later, in the summer of 2023 when I was in Delhi to launch Inja, I saw bael ka sherbet being sold on the streets and I was inspired to include it in my menu. I incorporated it as a fruit tart. Just like a lemon custard, I made a bael custard and added a basil cream on top, reminiscent of the tulsi leaves in my father’s bael sherbet.

To read more stories from Esquire India's November 2026 issue, pick up a copy of the magazine from your nearest newspaper stand or bookstore. Or click here to subscribe to the magazine.