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IF YOU'VE EVEN HAD THE SMALLEST GANDER at any of the social media platforms and forums over the past two decades, there’s a punchy Tamil word that keeps showing up and has gained global resonance. It’s a word that’s used to punctuate, to praise, and to puff up the object or subject under discussion. And since chef Vijay Kumar won the 2025 James Beard Award’s best chef in New York State, the word seems to have firmly planted itself into the mainstream’s lexicon as well. Let’s say it together, but put some pluck and some backbone into it: Semma!
“Semma” is the colloquial form of the Tamil word “semmaiyana”, which translates into red or reddish. It also refers to the Tamil warrior god Murugan. But specifically, it is the red associated with the ripening of a fruit. Think of the first word that escapes one’s lip on coming upon a ripened mango in one’s fruit basket: “awesome!”. And so, in popular parlance, “semma” has become a placeholder for these heightened states of joy. It is no wonder, Kumar conjured up this name for his Michelin-starred, New York City-based, must-visit restaurant that celebrates the pleasures of home food from his childhood spent in Natham, a small town near Madurai in Tamil Nadu.
Kumar’s James Beard Award win is the latest surefire sign that the conversations around Indian food have expanded way beyond nuclear-coloured butter chicken, slick and spicy vindaloo, and roti-naan. Kumar’s Semma proves that Indian food isn’t some sketchy, slick take on actually good Punjabi food; in fact, the food from this region of the world delights from kilometre to kilometre. This forty-four-year-old chef’s journey to creating dishes that stayed true to his childhood memories without making tweaks for the Western palate has been a long one. He started at the Taj Connemara in Chennai, moved to the US to work as a sous chef in Virginia, before cooking at San Francisco’s popular joint Dosa and then worked at Rasa, a Michelin-starred contemporary Indian fine dining eatery in California. Four years ago, in 2021, backed by Roni Mazumdar and Chintan Pandya of Unapologetic Foods, who also run the much-feted restaurants Dhamaka and Adda in New York, he was finally given free rein to make the kind of food that he’d like to eat.
While his menu at Semma deep-dives into the storied vegetarian traditions of South India, it satisfies the new Western wave of vegetarianism and veganism. He serves up dishes like mulaikattiya thaniyam, a spicy salad of grated coconut and sprouted green gram, the Mangalore huukosu, fried florets of cauliflower dipped in besan-and-rice-flour batter drizzled with coconut chutney and the most popular gunpowder dosa, a crisp, triangular dosa dusted with a spicy powder on its soft belly. But, it’s really the non-vegetarian dishes that have turned the spotlight on Semma; most of these dishes aren’t even available at restaurants within the country or even the state. Coaxed from his memories of foraging for snails in the paddy fields of Arasampatti with his grandmother on days they didn’t have enough to eat, the dish nathai pirattal now stands proud on the menu. Steamed snails are tossed in a tamarind-y, ginger-ry, toasty, spicy gravy and served on a banana leaf just the way he would eat it. There’s also a slow-cooked shank of venison flavoured with star anise and kalpasi, or a lichen-like spice called black stone flower, popular in Chettinad kitchens. Kumar remembers hunting for deer with his grandfather and cooking up the meat in mud pots; this dish pays tribute to that memory. His other homage to his family’s resolve to eat well, and definitely sustainably, before it was a buzzword, is the kudal varuval, a semi-gravy dish of goat intestines served with kal dosa. In this dish, intestines or boti are cooked to a perfect texture in a bath of caramelised onions and coconut milk. These dishes demonstrate that Kumar isn’t, in the words of Lady Gaga, “unafraid to reference or not reference” but rather, it is his childhood memories of food, the care shown to ingredients and warmth engendered by the eating that remain the North Star to his decisions.
Kumar started off his acceptance speech with the line, “When I started cooking, I never thought a dark-skinned boy from Tamil Nadu could make it to a room like this.” And by making it into this room, he has also brought into focus the culinary treasures of South India and perhaps even opened up the door for other cuisines of the rich subcontinent to be recognised and rewarded. And to that, let’s say it together again, louder this time: Semma Chef Vijay Kumar! Semma!
Semma is at 60 Greenwich Ave, New York, New York 10011. To book a reservation, visit here.
