We are opening a restaurant in Tokyo. Its name is Indo Zaika. It will be a premium Indo-Japanese dining experience — built on the depth of regional Indian cooking, finished with the discipline of a serious Japanese kitchen. It will open later this year, and we are writing today to introduce it.
This is the announcement. The work behind it has been quieter — many months of recipe development, supplier conversations across India and Japan, build-out of the dining room, training of the team. The announcement is one moment in a long arc. We are glad to share it.
The Indo Zaika dining room — designed to feel like an evening you would clear your calendar for.
The vision
Indo Zaika began with a simple, demanding ambition: build a restaurant in Tokyo that takes Indian cooking as seriously as the city takes its own cuisine. Tokyo is, by most measures, the most demanding restaurant city on earth. It deserves an Indian restaurant that does not apologise — that brings the depth and craft of regional Indian cooking, rendered for a Tokyo dining room, without dilution.
The vision is not fusion in the lazy sense. We are not putting curry on sushi rice. We are taking the architectural insights of Japanese cuisine — its respect for the single ingredient, its discipline of restraint, its anticipatory hospitality — and using them to render Indian cooking with a precision the cuisine has rarely been given. The result is, we believe, Indian food that a senior Japanese diner can recognise as serious cooking, and that a senior Indian diner can recognise as authentic.
Tokyo is the most demanding restaurant city on earth. It deserves an Indian restaurant that does not apologise.
The kitchen
Our kitchen is led by chefs with decades of combined experience across Indian fine dining and Japanese kitchens. The brigade has trained in Hyderabad and in Kanazawa, in Mumbai and in Kyoto. The senior team has cooked at Michelin-starred Indian restaurants in three countries and apprenticed in traditional Japanese kitchens whose names mean something to anyone who has eaten in Tokyo seriously.
The menu architecture is built on regional Indian cuisines — Hyderabadi dum biryani, slow-cooked Lucknowi dal, Punjabi tandoor-led work — rendered with Japanese seasonal produce and finished with the precision of a Tokyo plating discipline. Spices are sourced directly from producers we have visited. Proteins, vegetables, dairy, and rice are sourced from Japanese producers we trust. Nothing is on the plate that did not earn its place.
The Indo Zaika kitchen — Indian technique, Japanese ingredients, full respect for both.
The room
The dining room has been designed by a small team of Japanese craftspeople and Indian designers working together. The materials are honest — washi paper, dark woods, cured leather, brass — and the lighting is calibrated to flatter the food rather than dazzle the room. The seating is unhurried; the room holds a deliberately small number of guests so that service can be personal.
The space is divided into two registers. A counter, where small parties can watch the chefs work in the way a senior omakase counter allows. A main dining room, where larger parties can settle into a meal that unfolds over hours. Both are designed to support a meal you would clear your evening for — not a meal you would squeeze in.
What you can expect at the table
The menu will be tasting-led, with seasonal rotations four times a year and weekly adjustments based on what is best at the market. There will be an à la carte option for guests who prefer it. The wine, sake, and tea programmes have been built from the ground up — single-estate Indian and Japanese teas, sakes selected by a sommelier we trust, wines chosen to work with the spice rather than mask it.
Pricing will reflect what the experience requires to produce. We have committed to a sourcing standard that is not cheap, and we have built a service ratio that allows the team to do their work properly. Indo Zaika will not be the most expensive restaurant in Tokyo — we are not trying to be — and it will not be the cheapest. What we are aiming for is something that, on the night, justifies the price for any diner who cares about the work.
The team behind the kitchen
Indo Zaika is part of Shyama Corporation, a Tokyo-headquartered group building enduring ventures across technology, hospitality, and retail. The founders bring Indian and Japanese commercial experience in roughly equal measure. The operating partners have built and run premium hospitality businesses in three continents. The capital backing the restaurant is patient — we are building Indo Zaika for the next thirty years, not the next thirty months.
This matters because it shapes the kind of restaurant we are willing to be. We are not optimising for opening-night buzz. We are not optimising for the social-media moment. We are optimising for the diner who, six years from now, has eaten at Indo Zaika thirty times and brought their most demanding guests there each time.
The standard we are building toward: a restaurant a serious diner returns to, repeatedly, and brings their most demanding guests to.
What "coming soon" actually means
We expect to open later this year. The exact date will be announced once we are confident the kitchen, the dining room, and the service team are ready to be tested in front of paying guests. We are not in a hurry. The most expensive thing a restaurant can do is open before it is ready, and we would rather take an extra month than ship a kitchen that is not yet what we promised it would be.
If you would like to be notified when we are ready to take reservations, the best way is to join the Indo Zaika notification list on our site. We will write to that list before the public announcement, so that early supporters have first access.
What we ask of you
If Indo Zaika sounds like the kind of restaurant you would want to visit, we invite you to plan an evening for it when we open. Come with someone you would have a long conversation with. Allow yourself two and a half hours. Order generously. Talk to the team. Let us know what you thought.
Restaurants of this kind are built — over years — by the diners who choose to return. The Indo Zaika we will be running in five years is the one we are about to start building, on the night we open the doors. We would be honoured to have you with us.
Restaurants of this kind are built by the diners who choose to return. We would be honoured to have you with us.
