Vijay Kumar wins James Beard Award as New York’s best chef

Prestigious honor comes days after Semma became the first Indian restaurant to ever top NYT’s 100 best list

By Arun Kumar

Chef Vijay Kumar, the culinary force behind Semma, a South Indian fine dining restaurant in New York City, won the prestigious Best Chef: New York State award at the 2025 James Beard Awards.

“I stand here for everyone who thought their story never belonged on a stage like this.” he said accepting the award at a ceremony Monday at the Lyric Opera in Chicago honoring chefs and restaurants with one of the US culinary community’s highest accolades.

READ: 10 Indian American chefs among James Beard Awards semifinalists (January 24th, 2025) 

Many of the evening’s honorees highlighted the role of immigrants in American culinary culture. That message was underlined at the start of the ceremony by James Beard Foundation CEO Clare Reichenbach.

“America’s food scene has never been more dynamic, more diverse and exciting, and in large part we owe that dynamism, that vibrancy, to the immigrant communities that lead and underpin this industry in every way,” said Reichenbach. “We get to taste the world because of them.”

Under Kumar’s leadership, Semma recently became the first Indian restaurant to ever top The New York Times annual list of the city’s 100 best restaurants.

When Semma opened in 2021, it came out swinging with a menu of snails, rabbit, fermented rice pancakes, and foxtail millet porridge, all built around rustic village cooking from Tamil Nadu.

Dishes like eral thokku, nathai pirattal, and thinai khichdi speak distinctly of their roots and their mother tongue. Semma’s vision was not Indian food adapted to New York but Indian food that insists that New York catch up, according to Conde Nast Traveler .

Semma has held onto its own Michelin star for three consecutive years while collecting newer accolades. It’s the crown jewel of the Unapologetic Foods group, led by Roni Mazumdar and Chintan Pandya, who are responsible for redefining Indian dining in the city with hits like Adda, Dhamaka, Rowdy Rooster and Masalawala & Sons.

Chef Kumar, who previously led Rasa in California to a Michelin star, approaches Semma’s menu with clear intention: favouring specificity over safe bets, and eschewing crowd-pleasers for lesser-known dishes that are rarely seen outside homes in Tamil Nadu, let alone on Indian restaurant menus abroad, it says.

Every element at Semma feels deeply personal and rooted, right from the food, down to the clay pots and steel tumblers that one might find in kitchens across South India.

It all traces back to Kumar’s childhood in Natham near Madurai—and as he told Condé Nast Traveller earlier this year, he feels he is finally cooking what he grew up eating.

That intimacy is what makes Semma’s win feel different. It’s food that’s dialled into a time, a place, a memory. What’s more remarkable is how New York City has connected to the same frequency and flavour, the magazine says.