The Best New Restaurants and Bars in India in 2026 (So Far)

I recently found out that India’s food services market will overtake Japan’s by 2028 to become the world’s third-largest. I don’t usually lead with a stat, but honestly, you can feel this one on the ground.

In Delhi, recently, I went to three new openings in the same neighbourhood. I left Mumbai for a week, and then came back to a whole new pasta bar next to my house. We’ve gone a little nuts, maybe, but in a really great way.

However, the shape of what's opening is what I find more interesting than the number. We’re really learning how to reinvent the dining concept and the country is pushing it to a whole new level. In Hyderabad, for instance, there’s now a rooftop bar built around three actual Kadamba trees. Meanwhile, an invite-only cocktail bar now sits inside a 100-year-old Mahalaxmi Race Course mill (designed by Gauri Khan). In Delhi, a nine-seat basement in GK II gives way to a nine-course cocktail experience and the food plays second fiddle. Mumbai also opened its first proper beach club in Juhu, and we have to admit that it took way to long to arrive.

Honestly, it’s a good time to be hungry here.

Taking everything into consideration, this list was quite hard to write. When everyone's opening, standing out is a different sport — and a few places this year have genuinely cleared the bar. These are the fifteen I keep going back to, the ones I keep sending friends to, the ones where I've left thinking about one specific bite or pour for days afterwards.

Quick warning: Worth noting, because every list like this has its blind spots: these are my picks, filtered through my palate and my travel schedule and whatever I could get a table at. Bangalore's Koramangala and Indiranagar openings this year have been volume-heavy rather than breakout-good; Kolkata and Chennai are both sitting on openings I haven't yet made the trip for, and I'll be eating my words on at least one of them by year-end.

She's Here, Gurgaon

The Call Me Ten team's Gurgaon outpost had every reason to be a safe sequel and, thankfully, its not. Chef Vaibhav Bhargava's menu leans into Wafu. The truffle mushroom arancini has parmesan melting into a togarashi crust. There's a chilli-crunch avocado and tofu plate, bright and unexpected with pomelo and umeboshi, that I'd happily eat three times a week. The drinks menu is where the kitchen's discipline really shows: Mukul Yadav's Japanese Seven Star Picante, with chilli-oil-infused Don Julio and a peanut-chilli-coriander orgeat, is the kind of cocktail that reorganises your understanding of what a picante can do. Gurgaon diners are famously hard to impress and She's Here has, remarkably, impressed them. The rice and pasta section still has a few wobbles (a gochujang bucatini that tipped too sweet on my visit), but the ambition is correct, the room is moody-in-the-right-way, and the bar alone earns the trip.

Kadamba, Hyderabad

The rooftop bar has become the most abused category in Indian F&B, perhaps a nice view, some string lights, and a cacophony of horns. However, Kadamba, perched above Durgam Cheruvu in Madhapur, doesn’t play that game. This restaurant is like a modern rendition of a chaupal: three actual Kadamba trees sit on the roof, with low in-situ benches around them. The bar brief, from Goa-based mixologist Sujan Shetty and Palash Kadam, are really cool. Meanwhile, the podi edamame turned out to be one of the most memorable bar snacks I've eaten this year, soaked in milagaipodi so good. The Aam-Chur (tequila, amchur, olives), the Agasi Negroni with its coastal twist, the moong chilli dry that tastes like a Delhi street corner teleported south.

Fielia, Mumbai

The invite-only bar, Fielia, inside a 100-year-old mill at the Mahalaxmi Race Course, is a rare one. Gauri Khan has transformed the old industrial bones into what the team calls India's first "Cocktail Cinema": there are double-height ceilings, mezzanine balconies that look down, wrought-iron staircases, burgundy Chesterfields, and a central bar. Beverage Director Fay Barretto's opening chapter, Sin & Scandal, treats each cocktail as a small piece of theatre; Chef Hitesh Shanbhag — a CIA grad with Michelin time in New York — runs an aperitivo menu structured around the seven deadly sins. The pork belly goes through a two-day brine before it meets the barbecue sauce and apple relish. The gnocchi, finished aglio e olio, is just super comforting. It's moody, conceptual, slightly ridiculous in the most satisfying way, and the service ties it all together.

Bastian Beach Club, Juhu

For a city that is technically on an ocean, Mumbai has been spectacularly bad at acting like it. Ranjit Bindra and Shilpa Shetty have opened what is essentially Mumbai's first true beach club — a sprawling central pool, daybeds pointed at the Arabian Sea, sandy palettes, a Minal Chopra design that draws openly from Ibiza, Mykonos, and Saint-Tropez. The cover charge is a little high, but it works. The food pulls the greatest hits of the Bastian repertoire: Hamachi ceviche with sweet potato and tiger milk, the rock broccolini with curry leaf and chilli, and the Arabian seabass Amazonico. The bar is coastal with a Sakura Cloud Martini, the Shogun Mojito with shiso and sake. Finally, we don’t need goa anymore.

Tomo Kei, Bangalore

Whitefield is a word that used to make me audibly sigh. And yet: Chef Bobby T. Recto's 52-seat Nikkei restaurant inside the Sheraton Grand is the one that truly surprised me. Recto has fifteen years across six countries behind him — Four Seasons Kuwait, The Oberoi Bengaluru — and Nikkei cuisine turns out to be exactly his language. The salmon tiradito arrives under a pool of passionfruit leche; the jalapeño miso cod hits; the anticucho lamb chops are unapologetically good. Tableside moments give the meal theatre with guests blending their own leche de tigre. The sake list is also impressive, and the agave-forward cocktail programme is properly considered.

Flint, Mumbai

Rahul Akerkar is back, and he's brought fire. In the NCPA complex, Akerkar and Chef Jaydeep Mukherjee have opened an all-day café where everything — breakfast onward — moves through char, smoke, grill, or live flame. The Flint Eggs Benny sits on spicy crab cakes instead of a muffin. The black truffle butter spaghetti is classic Akerkar—comforting to a fault. At the bar, Brijesh Vyas's Picante, brightened with ambada leaves that taste like raw-mango pickle when you apply a little heat, is the sort of small, specific idea that separates a thoughtful cocktail menu from a long one. The Pandan Colada, with caramelised shallots lending a discreet smoke, is the other one I ordered twice. It's grown-up, it's ingredient-led, and it's open from breakfast through the late-night. I think Mumbai needed a piece of Akerkar back.

Top Banana, Delhi

Rajan Sethi's Bright Hospitality has opened the bar you wish your living room was. Above Ikk Panjab in GK II, Top Banana is a low-lit, vinyl-led, 38-seat room where the drinks programme (built with Pankaj Balachandran and the CounterTop team) runs on fermentation, clarification, and layered builds that don't announce themselves. Chef Tarannum Sehgal's Euro-Japanese plates are textural and precise, designed for grazing. The room opens with blues and easy classics and slides toward late-night house as the evening goes on — a slow-burn pacing I wish more Indian bars would commit to. The first drink on the menu is called Salt Before Senses; it's a thesis statement for the whole place. Unseriously serious, the bar calls itself. Seems about right.

Cavity at Barbet & Pals, Delhi

In here, there are nine seats, a blue door, and a concrete staircase down. This speakeasy is open on weekends only and you need to book in advance. Inside the basement of Barbet & Pals — itself one of last year's best openings — Jeet Rana, Chirag Pal, and chef Amninder Sandhu have built a nine-course, two-and-a-half-hour cocktail-led tasting that uses GI-tagged Indian ingredients as its anchor: Malta oranges from Uttarakhand, Bhimkol bananas from Assam, Sundarban honey, Tripura Queen pineapple. The Tooyamalli Rice drink clarifies a rasam and folds it into whisky and rice foam. The Guntur Chilli Chicken cocktail — mezcal, chicken salt rim, tomato pearls that pop — is exactly as preposterous as it sounds, and it is brilliant. Chef Sandhu's food mirrors each pour: gunpowder idli, slow-braised kareli drawing on nihari, pumpkin blossom stuffed with prawn balchao. A hydration break arrives as a coconut-water jelly droplet that explodes on the palate. The format is inverted from everything else you've done at a tasting menu, and the math is so precisely engineered that you walk out clear-headed. It's the most interesting thing happening in Delhi right now, full stop.

Nadoo, Delhi

The idli-dosa-sambar gospel that North India has been preaching as "South Indian food" for decades has finally met its corrective. Sahil Sambhi's Nadoo, in GK-3, is part tribute to his late Tamil mother, part long-overdue argument that the South is not a monolith. He's brought in Chef Shri Bala — a chartered accountant turned chef and food researcher who's spent years on Sangam-era texts and Chola-era kitchens — and the menu is the best case for range anyone's made in Delhi in a long time. There's a Chettinad raan built on slow-roasted, in-house masalas. A Russell Market Raan inspired by a century-old Bengaluru preparation. Pachi mirapakaya — that Andhra green chilli chicken — served with fluffy baos and a slice of coconut whose job is to catch the heat at exactly the right moment. Hot stone rice pots finished live at the table. A kaapi bar that treats filter coffee with the seriousness it's owed, including a First Dose Kaapi built from Bala's father's morning cup. The rammed-earth interiors insulate in a way Delhi restaurants don't usually bother with. This is the South Indian restaurant Delhi didn't know it was allowed to ask for.

Bare, Mumbai

South Bombay has needed a bar that can double as a gallery without apologising for either, and Bare does the shapeshift beautifully. The drinks are clean, composed, and modern. Order the airy cheese soufflé — it's closer to a warm fondue than a starter, and it pairs absurdly well with the White Truffle gin cocktail, which leads with fruit and holds its shape all the way down.

Izipizi Street, Pune

 A hawker-culture homage set up as a vibrant assortment of stalls, each with a focused brief: Moto Moto for grab-and-go sushi, a dim sum bar styled on Cantonese dumpling houses, a noodle stall for herby broths, Korean fried chicken, boba to finish. There's merch, and there's a 20-seat karaoke room inspired by East Asian private song rooms — which is either charming or ridiculous depending on your company, and either way, correct for a Friday night.

Bartender's Bunker at The Second House, Goa

Upstairs at The Second House, a five-to-seven-seat cocktail room with no fixed menu — you tell the mixologist your spirit of choice and a flavour direction, and they build. The walls are lined with house-made cordials and bitters; it doubles as the bar's lab. Unpretentious, unhurried, exactly the kind of thing Goa does better than most places.