Semma (restaurant)
restaurant in New York, United States
Semma is an Indian restaurant in New York City specializing in South Indian cuisine. The restaurant, operated by Roni Mazumdar and Chintan Pandya and their hospitality group Unapologetic Foods, replaced their first collaborative restaurant, Rahi. The restaurant received a Michelin Star in 2022, which it retained in 2023 and in 2024, it has received positive reviews from restaurant critics. Its chef Vijay Kumar won the 2025 James Beard Foundation Award for best chef in New York State.
History and focus
Rahi, the restaurant which previously occupied Semma's location, closed in September 2021. Semma opened on October 12, 2021. Vijay Kumar left his position as chef at Rasa, an Indian restaurant in California, to become Executive chef/ partner at Semma. Kumar grew up in Tamil Nadu and designed the menu to focus on the foods of Southern India. Dishes on the menu, including the nathai pirattal (a snail dish) and a venison dish, were inspired by meals prepared by Kumar's family during his childhood. Semma does not list a phone number.
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This entry incorporates text from “Semma (restaurant)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.