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This time last year, chef Rasika Venkatesa was experiencing burnout. Not surprising as the chef hit the ground running when she arrived in New York in 2024, including cheffing at a four-month residency, popping up at wine bars and coffee tasting rooms and cooking at private events.
“I was at a pop-up burnout, you could say. I had been pushing for a very long time,” she recounts.
But it was all laddering up to the opening of her own: Mythily, a progressive Indian concept with a Brooklyn soul. And while she initially received offers from private equity and angel investors to fund a brick-and-mortar spot, it didn’t align with her overall vision.
“I was like, ‘Maybe it's not the right time, maybe I need to find an actual job [or] go into private cheffing," she says. "I kind of put a pause on the dream for a bit.”
But what a year a difference makes. Last fall, the chef was named as one of Time Out’s “Best Young Chefs.” By winter, the chef signed a lease and went into business with her friends, Varun Kandadi and Nicolas Chavotier. She launched a Kickstarter, raising over $100,000, funded by friends and family. And now, after a months-long, very hands-on demolition process that she documented, the pop-up that she named after her grandmother now has a permanent home in Williamsburg as of September 30. Here are seven things to know about Mythily.
The chef found her restaurant space in a very New York way–over a slice of pizza.
Last year, Venkatesa started touring around some of New York’s hottest neighborhoods to open a restaurant, including the East Village, Fort Greene and Prospect Heights. But she naturally gravitated toward Williamsburg for its enclave of creatives. As for the space itself, she had come across it initially last summer and stumbled upon it once again in the winter in the most New York way possible—while getting a slice of pizza at L’Industrie.
"The tall ceilings, big windows and the kind of light that it gets in were just impeccable," she said about the restaurant space. "We saw that it had bones for a good restaurant, for Mythily's vision."
The interior is reminiscent of a South Indian village.
With the help of Studio Purisic, the 45-seat restaurant takes inspiration from a South Indian village. Deep green walls and tiles defines the bar, mixed with warm neutrals, reds and Moroccan clay plaster throughout the space. The rear of the restaurant previews a look into the kitchen, where it's easy to see Venkatesa and her team working away. And by the hostess stand there's a painting commissioned by Art by AiRa depicting a smaller Venkatesa sitting with her grandmother, who hand-feeds her food from a banana leaf.
Mythily was initially intended to be a fine dining restaurant.
When Venkatesa started Mythily two and a half years ago, she envisioned it as more of a fine dining revue.
“When I started Mythily [in] 2024, I wanted to do a tasting menu, something super high-end that used my fine dining background,” she says (a background that so happens to include training at the French Laundry, becoming the chef de cuisine at San Francisco's Mourad—one of the youngest CDCs in the industry—and a run on “Top Chef” season 21). Her four-month residency at Brooklyn’s now-closed incubator space, Fulgurances Laundromat, gave her the ability to test such a format. But soon, the chef realized she wanted to create something more approachable.
“Once you tie yourself to a tasting menu right from the start, it's hard to branch out into different directions,” she says. “I want people to try out different things and be able to share—that's like the whole essence of Indian cuisine.”
The Mythily of today balances the amalgamation of her journey and her travels across Tamil Nadu.
From the beginning, Mythily has hit on three tenets: Venkatesa’s Chennai upbringing, techniques she gleaned from her travels across Tamil Nadu and what Indian food means today. Certainly a tall order under one roof.
“What does progressive mean, right? [Mythily] is not just fusion—what we do here is not combining a South Indian dish with a Western dish. It's using the techniques that we've garnered in other kitchens, the seasonal produce of New York and the food that I grew up with in South India,” she says.
The menu starts with snacks including masala pecans and a basket of vegetable fritters with chutneys for dipping. Glimmers of her pop-up days can still be found on her small plates menu, such as the Scallop that she debuted at Place des Fêtes, cured in coriander and rum, paired with a coconut yogurt, a South Indian pickle called puli inji, finished with a granita made with jaggery (palm sugar), ginger powder, cardamom powder and black pepper.
But it's dishes like the tilefish (with romanesco, black currant kosho and Nagapattinam manga curry) that directly references her time spent researching and eating across Tamil Nadu. In 2024, Venkatesa visited the coastal port city of Nagapattinam in "search of good seafood." But due to a mix-up of travel delays, she arrived in the afternoon when the morning catch was over. Luckily, she came across a fisherman who graciously took her and her friend on a journey.
“In the heat of the afternoon, we went with him and some of his fisherman friends. We [caught] red snapper and a grouper, and we scaled it and gutted it on the boat. And then he actually took us to his home. And his wife actually cooked us this raw mango fish curry. She walked us through the whole steps,” she says, reminiscing about how they all eventually gathered on the floor to eat. “At that moment, I knew that food does not have to be super technical to be amazing. It just needs to come from a good place.”
No surprise, her desserts are just as exciting.
Her Ras Malai “Tres Leches” is already making waves. Once served at her Fulgurances residency, Venkatesa soaks sponge cake in saffron-cardamom milk, finishing it with whipped white chocolate, toasted pistachios, almonds and orange zest. The Filter Coffee Soft Serve is also a bit of a callback, as the ice cream, topped with cacao nibs, a Kadalai Urundai crumble and peanut and jaggery brittle, uses Driftaway Coffee as a base, another location that she took over this year.
The beverage program follows the low-ABV trend.
Mythily’s beverage program balances low-ABV cocktails and non-alcoholic drinks. Inspired by fruit vendors or Chennai's waterfront comes the Marina Beach with housemade pineapple tepache, green cardamom shochu and ginger beer. Meanwhile, the tart and floral Kho Kho, which takes its name from a schoolyard game, relies on a hibiscus-infused shochu and housemade rosebud syrup. Non-alcoholic drinks include 2nd Innings, a spiced black tea with fresh ginger juice and jaggery, and the Power cut with sarsaparilla, mint and lemon soda. The menu rounds out with beers and wines from Belgium, France and Canada.
Mythily stands to challenge what Indian cuisine can be in New York
Venkatesa hopes that people can walk away from Mythily, experiencing the depth and reach of Indian cuisine, presented in an "out of the box way."
"I want people to understand Indian cuisine can be perceived in different ways, and that it's okay to stray away from one traditional mindset," she says. "I want diners to take away where Indian cuisine can go in New York."