The building is hard to miss. Its facade is a striking melange of turquoise, rust and gold, layered almost like an abstract, with no part quite predictable. In many ways, it is an apt visual introduction to chef and restaurateur Gaggan Anand’s universe of food and theatre—colourful, irreverent and impossible to read at first glance.
Raga stands aloof on Delhi’s Janpath Road, a short distance from India Gate. Once home to Masala Library by Jiggs Kalra, the address now marks Anand’s proverbial return to India since his departure 20 years ago. Along with Rydo Anton, the group executive chef of his eponymous Bangkok restaurant, and restaurateur Zorawar Kalra, Raga signals a renewed ambition in Delhi’s fine-dining landscape, with some compelling new additions— Bangkok’s Michelin-starred Jhol is reportedly opening in November.
It was in Delhi that Indian Accent, helmed by chef Manish Mehrotra, helped chart the path for India’s modern Indian food movement when it opened at The Manor in 2009. Several restaurants in Mumbai and later Bengaluru followed, further shaping how we eat and perceive Indian cuisine. When Mehrotra opened Nisaba at the historic Humayun’s Tomb earlier this year, it showed that the city was ready for more.
Over the years, several offers to open a restaurant in India came Anand’s way, but as he puts it, “nothing felt right”. Then, in mid-2025, came a call from Kalra, who had dined at Gaggan in Bangkok the previous night: “I have a space for you. Come and see it.”
Kalra offered him the marquee Janpath space that had housed a restaurant bearing his father’s name for years. “Then I came to Delhi, saw this location, and I loved it,” says Anand. On 26 August, Raga launched with a 22-course menu for 36 covers, priced at ₹11,111 per person.
The menu takes diners through his style of food where fine-dining conventions are routinely turned on their head. The flavours are unapologetically bold, perhaps reflecting an understanding of what Delhi diners enjoy. A few hit dishes from Gaggan, Bangkok have been retained here. Like Lick It Up: an ice-cream bar painted on to the plate, with sweet and tart flavours that diners are invited to literally lick off.
“Delhi has always been a very important food city. People here have opinions about food, which I like,” says Anand. “And, they will tell you immediately whether they love it or hate it, and which is good. I prefer that.”
The Capital is not new to fine-dining, but it has not always demonstrated the same depth or vigour of experimental dining as Mumbai or Bengaluru.
But Kalra sees something larger taking shape. “A serious dining city is created by an ecosystem—chefs, restaurateurs, producers, and most importantly, diners who are willing to support ambitious restaurants. All those pieces are beginning to come together.”
Anand is less interested in drawing lines between cities. “I don’t know if I would divide people so much by city. Indian diners have changed enormously. They travel and eat all over the world, and understand restaurants much more than before. People also have the patience now to sit for 20 or 25 courses and enjoy the journey,” he says of his recent pop-ups, including one at Masque, Mumbai, in May. “We did 20 courses. People gave us their time, they enjoyed the madness.”
It was covid-19 that made diners more curious about their food and heritage, nudging them to travel far and wide in search of new and unfamiliar flavours. Take Ankur Ahuja and her husband Anindya Roy, who live in Delhi, and travelled to Kasauli recently, to eat at chef Prateek Sadhu’s restaurant Naar. They have long wanted to try Gaggan in Bangkok, but dates and availability never aligned. Raga, therefore, is an obvious draw. “We are excited to finally sample his craft,” says Ahuja, who considers the price tag premium, but acceptable for a trailblazing culinary artist.
That price point also brings into focus the economics of running a restaurant of this ambition. The crockery is sourced from a village in Japan, the glassware is by the German luxury brand Schott Zwiesel, and Kalra points to a 3:1 staff-to-guest ratio, making it a model that cannot rely simply on volume.
“Gaggan (Anand) actually wanted to price the experience closer to ₹50,000,” says Kalra, citing the price point of the former’s earlier Indian residencies, which sold out. “I didn’t want Raga to become something people only spoke about because they couldn’t afford to get in.” The eventual price, he says, was a balance between accessibility and an auspicious beginning.
The dinner experience feels like a distillation of Anand’s three decades in the kitchen, nearly half spent working alongside Anton, who joined as a chef de partie 14 years ago, and is leading the kitchen in India. Even the name brings the two together: Ra from Rydo Anton and Ga from Gaggan Anand. Twenty-two courses sounds like a lot. Around course 14 or 15, you wonder how you will keep going. Yet you do, propelled by flavours, surprises and storytelling.
For me, the meal was less about decoding each dish and more about the element of surprise—not quite knowing what would arrive next, but trusting that it would be worth the discovery.
Take a dish from the chaat section: a golden egg nestled on potato straw turns out to be pani puri. Anand’s famous Yogurt Explosion, a dish he is credited with inventing and one widely imitated, appears here as Pink Blossom. The presentation has changed, but the sense of wonder remains—that delicious moment when what your mind expects and what your palate receives are entirely different. The Aloo Bonda Sandwich looks straightforward, until you discover that the tiny slices of “bread” aren’t bread at all. Visual trickery, textural surprise and a constant play with expectation—precisely what you expect from his kitchen.
For food critic and author Rashmi Uday Singh, who has followed Anand’s journey for more than a decade, Raga is another gutsy move from a chef who refuses to play safe. “All my senses were pampered. Visual, auditory, tactile, taste,” says Singh, remembering the first time she ate Lick It Up at Gaggan in Bangkok many years ago.
Perhaps that ability to turn a meal into a lasting memory is what Delhi diners are now hungry for. Raga is already booked out for the next five to six weeks, with reservations crashing the servers when they opened on 15 August. It may be a sign that the city is ready to become a more serious player in India’s fine-dining conversation.
Tanu Ganguly is a Gurugram-based journalist and writes about food, dining and culture.