James Beard Award 2025 winner chef Vijay Kumar interview: On heritage cuisines, his inspiration, success in New York

Chef Vijay Kumar, a Tamil Nadu native, made his mark on the global culinary scene by winning the prestigious James Beard Award for Best Chef in New York State.

Vijay Kumar, executive chef and partner at Semma (meaning fantastic in Tamil), New York City’s only Indian restaurant with a Michelin star, recently won the 2025 James Beard Award for New York state’s Best Chef. The coveted culinary accolade is an homage of sorts to Kumar’s storybook sojourn from humble beginnings in rural Tamil Nadu to American gastronomic zenith.

Semma's rise to fame

Vijay Kumar, an executive chef and partner at Semma, is the James Beard Award 2025 winner for New York state’s Best Chef.

Semma, the first Indian restaurant to top The New York Times 100 Best Restaurants list, serves traditional Tamilian dishes besides some regular south Indian fare. “We have been totally blessed and have been full since the first day of the restaurant’s opening. There’s no slow day or empty tables — weekends or weekdays,” chef Vijay Kumar says. The change that he has seen post the award is a rise in the numbers on the waitlist.

According to the restaurant site, this food is drawn from memory, from farm life and family kitchens, from rituals rarely seen outside south India. With uncompromising regional ingredients and powerful, layered flavours, Semma continues to offer a singular, unapologetic experience, one plate at a time.

Semma is a collaborative effort between chef Vijay Kumar (right) and Unapologetic Foods, a New York-based restaurant group led by Indian entrepreneurs Roni Mazumdar (left) and Chintan Pandya (centre).

Kumar's inspiration for cooking came from seeing his mother and grandmother cook. He points out that while many of us take food and the effort that goes behind making three meals a day for granted, food brings families together and brings 'so much joy to the table'. He also shares that his collaboration with the Unapologetic Foods team happened by destiny and they came together for a shared vision.

Chef Vijay Kumar's journey to success

Attributing Semma's success to authenticity, Kumar shares, “We are who we are, and we try to cook authentic food, which is what I grew up eating instead of being pretentious or trying to fit into someone else’s mould.”

Kumar migrated to the US in 2007, seeking greener pastures. After a brief one-year stint at an Indian restaurant in Virginia, he moved to California, where he worked for 13 years — the first six as a sous chef and then as a head chef at San Francisco-based Dosa and then as a head chef at the Rasa restaurant in Burlingame.

‘I wanted to cook authentic food’

Rasa became California’s first Indian restaurant to win a Michelin star. “In California, I was cooking contemporary Indian food using local ingredients like asparagus and artichokes, which I had never seen or heard about in India. I wanted to cook authentic food,” Kumar says about why he left the Golden State eatery and moved to New York.

Speaking about joining the Institute of Hotel Management in Trichy because his family was unable to afford engineering school, 44-year-old Kumar fondly recalls learning discipline, perfection, and technique at the school. He was hesitant to share with friends that he was attending the institute to become a chef, but in retrospect, he is glad that he followed his passion for cooking and became a chef. Kumar’s first cooking job was at Chennai’s Taj Connemara.

Chef Vijay Kumar's restaurant, Semma, in New York City, showcases authentic South Indian cuisine that has captured the hearts of foodies worldwide.

‘Tamil food like Tamil language is thousands of years old’

Commenting on wanting to introduce authentic Tamil cuisine to the west, Kumar acknowledges that it was a 'huge risk that, by God’s grace, has worked out'. “Every state in India has a different, unique cuisine and needs to be showcased to the western world too. Tamil food like the Tamil language, is thousands of years old and is undiluted by invaders or other influences,” says Kumar.

Like a savvy mother not choosing between her children, Kumar does not reveal a favourite dish from the menu. He says that he is a rice eater and likes dosas and biryanis. Everything on the menu is there because it's authentic, like nathai pirattal (snails), which he’d search in paddy fields as a boy and associated with poverty but has become a signature dish at the restaurant.

Succeeding in New York

The most difficult thing about success is to go on being a success — a tall order in New York’s tough restaurant milieu. “The food I grew up on is made with care, with fire, with soul, and is now taking the main stage,” said Kumar at the James Beard Award ceremony. “I remember mornings in Natham (his native place in Tamil Nadu). They were quiet with roosters crowing, kolams being drawn, and the smell of wood smoke in the air. Everything was simple and close to the land.”