10 min readNew DelhiAug 27, 2026 06:57 AM IST First published on: Aug 27, 2026 at 06:57 AM ISTIn 2007, Gaggan Anand left India for Bangkok, initially for a consultancy, before opening his own eponymous restaurant, Gaggan, in 2010. It became one of the defining restaurants of its generation — topping Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants five times and earning two Michelin stars. But one desire stayed unfulfilled: to have a restaurant of his own in India. He had circled the idea for a decade – a plan with Garima Arora that never quite arrived, sold-out residencies priced around Rs 50,000. None of it had the permanence he wanted. Then Zorawar Kalra walked in.“My original goal was to open another Masala Library here (Janpath, New Delhi). We already ran one successfully, critically and commercially, for years,” Zorawar shares with The Indian Express at a media preview the night before the restaurant opened to the public. “So before opening a second one, my wife and I decided to tour a few restaurants first, come back with a fresh perspective.” Gaggan was on that list, and that one meal got Zorawar thinking. “We were overwhelmed by the quality of the experience, so much so that at the end, both my wife and I stood up and started clapping. That day I realised: this was on another level.”