The 8 Most Exciting New Restaurants in India

The Cavity, New Delhi

The Cavity is a nine-seat basement experience tucked beneath Barbet & Pals in GK II, where co-founders Jeet Rana and Chirag Pal pair cocktails built around India’s GI-tagged, seasonal ingredients with food from chef Amninder Sandhu, running Fridays through Sundays only. The nine courses move between drink and dish, from a Sundarban honey mead with cotton candy to a Tooyamalli rice cocktail with clarified rasam, whiskey and rice foam, served alongside a Gunpowder Idli filled with pepper crab and caviar. Portions are deliberately small, capped at 240 milliliters of alcohol per person across the whole tasting, so the point is range rather than volume. The standout pairing is the Black Cardamom cocktail, smoky with single malt and mezcal, next to Sandhu’s nihari reworked with compressed shank meat. It’s a rare instance of a cocktail menu and tasting menu built as equals rather than one serving the other.

Chef Auroni at the GrillPikturenama Studios