Chef Vijay Kumar Wins Top US Culinary Award For Bold Tamil Cuisine

 At the Lyric Opera House in Chicago, where the 2025 James Beard Awards were held earlier this week, the usual rhythms of culinary recognition played out as chefs were spotted in tailored jackets, media was seen shuffling between courses, applause rising and falling with each name called. Then something historic happened.

Vijay Kumar, the chef of Semma, a small South Indian restaurant in New York’s Greenwich Village, took the stage to accept the award for Best Chef: New York State-the highest ranking culinary award in the US.

In a Veshti, the traditional garment of his native Tamil Nadu, Kumar spoke about belonging, where most people take the moment to talk about their ambition or innovation.

“When I started cooking,” he said, “I never thought a dark-skinned boy from Tamil Nadu would make it to a room like this. But the food I grew up on—food made with care, with fire, with soul—is now taking the main stage," he told BBC.

The James Beard Awards, often described as the most prestigious culinary honours in the United States, recognises skill in the kitchen as well as contributions to hospitality, media, and the broader food system.

For many chefs, a Beard award is both career milestone and institutional blessing. For Kumar, it was something else: an acknowledgment of a cuisine rarely seen in these spaces, and of a story rarely centered in American fine dining.

Semma, which opened in 2021, is part of the Unapologetic Foods group, co-founded by Chintan Pandya and Roni Mazumdar. The name of the group is not ornamental. At Semma, there are no concessions to Western palates or expectations—no butter chicken, no naan, no adjustments in heat.

Instead, the menu offers dishes like nathai pirattal (snails cooked in a pepper-heavy gravy), eral thokku (spiced prawns), and foxtail millet khichdi, many of them served in banana leaves or clay pots.

The restaurant has held a Michelin star since 2022 and was named the number one restaurant on The New York Times’ 100 Best list earlier this year.

Still, the James Beard Award has marked a turning point as it not only legitimises the food, although Kumar has never sought that kind of approval, but also because it reflects a shift in who gets seen, and why.

“There’s no such thing as poor people’s food or rich people’s food,” he said in his speech. “It’s food. It’s powerful. And the real luxury is to be able to connect with each other around the dinner table.”

Surprisingly, Kumar’s journey into cooking was unplanned. He grew up in Arasampatti, a village near Madurai, surrounded by coconut trees and rice fields and hoped to become an engineer.

But when his family couldn’t afford the fees, he enrolled in a catering program instead. From there, he moved to California, where he worked at Rasa, eventually earning it a Michelin star, and later relocated to New York to lead Semma.

Other chefs nominated in his category this year included Nasim Alikhani (Sofreh), Ryan Fernandez (Southern Junction Barbecue), Eiji Ichimura (Sushi Ichimura), and Atsushi Kono (Kono). The ceremony also honoured Bucheron, in Minneapolis, as Best New Restaurant, and Jungsik Yim of Jungsik in Tribeca as Outstanding Chef.

Kumar’s win broadly is a recognition of a cuisine long considered too specific, too rustic, too regional to travel. Beyond the walls of his restaurant, the award highlights how the cuisine has travelled. And it has arrived.

“I stand here,” he said, “for everyone who never thought their story belonged on a stage like this.”