Vijay Kumar grew up on his family’s farm in Tamil Nadu, where they cultivated ponni rice. It’s the same variety you’ll find bowls of—steaming, perfectly cooked—on many tables at Semma, the smash-hit South Indian restaurant in New York City where Kumar is chef and partner. The one-page menu features a dosa, folded around a mound of masala potatoes, alongside a sambar that’s worth drinking all on its own. There’s a Keralan banana-leaf-wrapped fish, Goanese oxtails, tender snails served up on a bed of their shells, and a delicately presented Mangalore cauliflower. Each dish is a lovingly crafted representation of South Indian cooking, a cuisine that is often underrepresented in the US.
For Kumar, the path to opening one of Bon Appétit’s best new restaurants of 2022 didn’t start at culinary school (though he did attend one) or in a Michelin kitchen (he’s played that game too). It started on his family’s farm, in those rice paddies.
Here, a comic by artist Becca Human chronicles one deeply talented chef’s winding paths to opening New York’s best new restaurant. —Elazar Sontag, restaurant editor