From Punjab to Pattaya to Bangkok

The short version: a family from Punjab decided that if they were going to cook for strangers, they would cook the way they cook for each other.

The first restaurant

Our story does not start in Bangkok. It starts in Pattaya, in 2018, with a small Indian restaurant called Biryani 99. The name was a promise: a proper biryani for ฿99. Layered, dum-cooked, with goat from a halal supplier, served with raita and salan on the side. (We still cook biryani that way — see our biryani in Bangkok page.)

Pattaya does not have a huge Indian population, but it has Indian tourists — a lot of them. Word travels fast in that community. Within a year, Biryani 99 had a steady regular crowd of Indian families on holiday, plus locals who wandered in once and came back weekly.

What made it work was simple: the food tasted like home. Not "Indian food adjusted for foreign palates." Not "Punjabi-Bangladeshi fusion." Actual North Indian cooking. The masalas were ground fresh. The yogurt for the kebabs was hung overnight. The rice was aged basmati from Punjab. The biryani took 45 minutes because that is how long a real biryani takes.

The decision to come to Bangkok

By 2023, the question had become "When are you opening in Bangkok?" Indian travelers staying in Pattaya were asking. Friends and family in Bangkok were asking. Even some of our regular Pattaya diners (Bangkok-based on holiday) were asking.

The answer was harder than we thought. Bangkok already has Indian restaurants. Plenty of them. So if we were going to do this, it had to be different — not different in some clever marketing way, but different in the actual food.

We spent six months looking at the Bangkok Indian food scene. What we found surprised us:

• The high-end restaurants were beautiful but the food was hotel-grade — competent, expensive, lacking the rough authenticity we cared about.
• The cloud kitchens were affordable but the food was cooked from pre-made pastes. Same five gravies dressed up with different proteins.
• The mid-range options were stuck somewhere in between, never quite committing to either side.

What was missing was the equivalent of a good neighborhood Punjabi restaurant — the kind you find in Amritsar or Delhi. Real food. Reasonable prices. A room you actually want to sit in. So that became the brief.

Finding Huai Khwang

We looked everywhere. Sukhumvit was too expensive for the rents to make sense. Phra Khanong was too quiet. Asok was too touristy.

Then we walked New Phetchaburi Road one afternoon and noticed something: Grand Mercure Bangkok Atrium was right there. Lancaster Hotel was right there. So was Avani. Holiday Inn. Marriott. Within a 10-minute walk, we counted six four- and five-star hotels — and a huge percentage of their guests on any given week were Indian.

For Indian travelers staying at those hotels, the options for dinner were limited: hotel buffet, GrabFood, or a 20-minute taxi to a "good" Indian place. We could be a 2-minute walk away. That was a real gap, and it was the gap we wanted to fill.

2055 New Phetchaburi Road came up in late 2023. A 30-40 seat dining room downstairs, a full kitchen on the second floor with room for a real charcoal tandoor. We signed in a week.

Building the kitchen

The hardest decision was the tandoor. Every consultant we talked to recommended a gas-convection unit — cheaper, safer, less smoke management, easier to permit. We installed a real charcoal one anyway. It cost more, it required a separate ventilation setup, and it failed inspection twice before we got the smoke handling right. But it was non-negotiable. A real tandoor at 480°C does something to meat that nothing else can replicate. The smoky bite, the high-heat sear that seals the outside in seconds — that's what makes a tandoori dish actually taste like a tandoori dish.

The second hardest decision was the menu. Indian restaurants in Bangkok lean toward giant menus — 200+ items spanning North, South, Indo-Chinese, Thai-fusion. We thought about going small (60 items, hyper-focused) but then Indian guests would feel underserved. So we went the other direction: 200+ items, all North Indian, all halal. Wider than we wanted, but every dish on the menu is something we'd serve at our own table.

Our chef

Our chef is from Uttarakhand in northern India — the mountain state between Punjab and the Himalayas. He brings years of professional kitchen experience, having cooked in Indian restaurants before moving to Thailand to join us. He runs every station personally: tandoor, gravies, biryani, breads.

He refuses to cook from pre-made pastes. We support that 100%. It means his prep starts hours before service — masalas ground, paneer set, marinades prepared — even though we do not open until noon. But it shows in the food. Read more about our chef →

The first year

We opened in early 2024. The first three months were quiet — Bangkok takes a while to discover a new restaurant, especially one that doesn't blast Instagram ads. Then a few hotel concierges started recommending us. A few Indian tour groups came through. Our first Google review came in. Then five more. Then ten. Then twenty. We are now 5.0 stars on Google with 24 verified reviews and counting, and most days the room is comfortably full from 7 PM onward.

We are still figuring out parts of it. Delivery via GrabFood and LINE MAN is in the works. Our website is being rebuilt as you read this. We do not yet have an Instagram strategy. We do not advertise on Facebook (yet). What we have is the food — best summarised on our best Indian food in Bangkok page.

Where we go from here

Honestly, nowhere flashy. We do not plan to franchise, expand, or open Mumbai-style cloud kitchens in five other Bangkok districts. The plan is to keep doing this one room well. Refine the menu. Bring in a few seasonal Punjabi dishes that change with the months. Train more cooks. Get to 50 reviews on Google the honest way (one happy diner at a time, not by buying them). For the kitchen credo, see our chef.

If you have read this far, thank you. If you make it to Bangkok and find yourself near Huai Khwang, walk over. We are here from 12 noon to midnight, every day. The chai is good even if you didn't come for chai.