Some Indian American Restaurants Are Beginning to Embrace Beef

As many Indian restaurants worldwide consider serving beef taboo, chef Sujan Sarkar savored the rare opportunity to taste quality meat. Beef from Nebraska was considered a specialty at one of the Michelin-starred restaurants he worked at in London, Galvin at Windows, a French spot formerly inside the Hilton Park Lane in London. Sarkar, chef at Indienne — Chicago’s lone Michelin-starred Indian restaurant, and one of only three that have earned that status in the United States, says British beef couldn’t compete with USDA prime cuts.

Beef is expensive, not widely available in all parts of India, and is considered holy in many sects of Hinduism. However, in the U.S., non-Indian Americans tend to associate Indian cuisine only with that singular cultural practice. It’s such a widespread perception that English speakers, like Chicago baseball announcer Harry Caray, even have an expression tied to it — holy cow! Chicago Seven member Abbie Hoffman turned it into an anti-authority metaphor and is credited with saying “sacred cows make the tastiest burger.” UHF features “Weird Al” Yankovic’s playful portrayal of Gandhi in 1989 while ordering a medium-rare steak. The first wave of Indian restaurants in America brought the cultural norms of the early 1900s with them and shunned beef. Tandoori chicken was positioned in the ’60s as the Indian American counterpart to the showstopping Beijing duck popular at Chinese American restaurants. Lamb curries and kabobs emerged as stand-ins to satiate America’s beef lovers.

But decades later that Puritan image of India is fading in America, and it appears Chicago, with its storied meatpacking history, has become the center for a new style of Indian dining that embraces the beef. One tell is Sarkar who says one of his favorite restaurants is Asador Bastian, a well-regarded Basque steakhouse that’s a short walk from Indienne. Though Indienne proudly features vegetables in all menus — not just the vegetarian option — Sarkar has been experimenting with a beef dish. For private events only, he’s serving a short rib braised with a Madras curry inspired by black peppercorn sauce. It makes sense, after all, black pepper originated in India.

“Some people are cooking camel, ostrich,” Sarkar says. ”We don’t have to do it here, because that’s not from here. But in America, beef is one of the main sources of protein, and people like that — and it’s good.” These days, seeing beef on an Indian menu is hardly shocking. The protein has earned a place in prominent Indian restaurants across America like Dhamaka in New York; Rania in Washington, D.C.; and BadMaash in LA.

Beef can be found in India, but diners need to be in the know. It might have different names. Sarkar remembers seeing it called water buffalo. Vinod Kalathil of Thattu has memories of attending engineering school in India and seeing the reactions from his Northern India classmates when they saw beef served at the dining hall: “They were absolutely shocked,” Kalathil recalls. And Sheal Patel of Dhuaan BBQ remembers walking through night markets in Mumbai and Delhi and seeing plenty of street vendors selling beef and pork dishes.

Patel represents a wave of second-generation chefs all over America who have experimented with their home spice pantries, livening American staples from burgers to omelets to pizzas. Patel says TikTok has played a role with desis sharing techniques and photos from their travels. “I don’t think 10 years ago this would be a very welcome topic,” Patel says. Patel calls Dhuaan a tribute to the food his mother cooked as well as his visits to Central Texas where barbecue — particularly beef — is king. His brisket and masala beef cheesesteaks have popped up at bars across Chicago.

Kalathil, who grew up in India, would see beef labeled as “mutton sukka” (dry beef) offered at restaurants in the South Indian state of Kerala, where it’s more common to find beef. Kalathil and his wife, chef Margaret Pak, have served beef at Thattu, their lauded Keralan restaurant, from day one. Inspired by Pak’s Korean heritage, they use short rib in their beef fry — slow-roasted thin slices of meat fried with coconut oil and flavored with curry leaves and onions.

“We want to make sure the food is for everybody,” Kalathil says — Thattu has plenty of vegetarian options, too. “And if some people don’t want to eat that, that’s perfectly fine.” However, he says beef is essential to Keralan culture.

Thattu is playing with different cuts of beef as short rib is expensive, and while Western restaurants may use the bones for stock for soups or sauces, there’s little history of utilizing scraps in South Asian cuisines. They may even switch to boneless lamb in their biryani as some guests have expressed a preference. Pak and her kitchen crew are also tweaking a new beef burger offering.

A watershed moment in Indian American history may have occurred in 2015 when Lucky Peach, the defunct food magazine ran a recipe for tandoori steak using thick beef ribeyes as opposed to the thin cuts found in traditional South Asian beef dishes. That begot a steak pop-up run by chefs Dave Chang and Akhtar Nawab and cheekily named Ruth Krishna’s Steakhouse, though Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse attorneys quickly hit the effort with a cease and desist letter.

Flash forward to 2023 when Diaspora Spices began selling Steak Masala as a competitor to McCormick’s Montreal Steak Seasoning. Diaspora founder Sana Javeri Kadri, who grew up eating beef — she’s Hindu, Jain, and Muslim — says the spice mix, which went through four or five recipes, is a top seller that customers use on vegetables and meats alike. She says Diaspora has received zero negative feedback. The mix is made with Diaspora’s Surya Salt, Aranya Black Pepper, Sirārakhong Hāthei Chillies, Pahadi Pink Garlic, Hariyali Fennel, and Wild Ajwain.

“This myth that India is vegetarian is obviously the voices of few speaking louder than the country at large,” Javeri Kadri says. “It’s a very Hindu, upper-caste take — most lower-caste folks don’t have the privilege of not eating meat.”

Chicago should be used to religious and class restrictions. Blue laws, which date back to the late 1800s, were Catholic doctrines that prohibited activities like going to the movies, traveling, or selling anything on Sundays. Even as laws loosened, some operators continued to keep restrictions. In the ’80s, many Chicago grocery stores would cover their meat coolers with a blue wrap to prevent customers from putting beef into their shopping carts.

Earlier this year in suburban Chicago, a new contemporary Indian restaurant, Indus, debuted featuring a wagyu beef ribeye and brisket cooked in a pellet smoker (Indus also smokes vegetarian dishes, like daal, with tasty results). Indus is one of the few Indian restaurants around Chicago that brings out steak knives. Owners Sukhu and Ajit Kalra say the brisket is so popular they’ve been getting requests from Jewish customers who wanted it for their High Holidays. It wouldn’t be the first Jewish-Indian crossover. In August while at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, as his wife prepared to accept the Democratic presidential nomination, Doug Emhoff complimented his wife Vice President Kamala Harris saying she “makes a mean Passover brisket.”

Indienne

However, many restaurants remain uncomfortable discussing the topic of beef. Some chefs around the country declined to comment for this story. They didn’t want to alienate customers with strong opinions about beef. It’s still a sensitive subject and one that drifts into politics, with Hindu nationalism driving narratives. Rakesh Patel of Patel Brothers, the world’s largest South Asian grocer, founded in 1974 in Chicago, says his company has never carried beef. He says it was challenging enough to hear objections from vegetarians when the chain began carrying fish, though frozen fish is one of the chain’s biggest money makers.

But some see the subject as a matter of hospitality. In years past, James Beard-recognized chef Zubair Mohajir has shied away from serving beef at Coach House, his tasting menu restaurant. Mohajir is Muslim, so beef isn’t prohibited, but he’s avoided it to offend any customers. It’s a form of respect. At his new restaurant, Mirra, which blends Mexican and Indian flavors, there’s a carne asada dish that, according to co-chef Rishi Manoj Kumar, is as much a tribute to Mexican cuisine as it is a way to honor Chicago’s steakhouse culture and history of meatpacking.

But as India isn’t a monolith, neither is South Asia. Chicago is no stranger to dishes like frontier beef. Local Pakistani restaurant, Khan BBQ, has served the item and other beef options like chapli kebab for more than two decades along Devon, Chicago’s main South Asian hub. A newer entry, Tandoor Char House in Lakeview — a Pakistani Indian fusion spot — has long embraced beef with items like beef seekh kebab and beef nihari. Owner Faraz Sardharia says his father being from India and his mother being from Pakistan granted him the freedom to design a menu without boundaries.

However, many Pakistani and Bangladeshi American restaurants (and other countries within the South Asian diaspora) still label themselves as “Indian” for marketing purposes — it was easier to conflate rather than to explain nuance to American diners Googling “butter chicken near me.” Beef is often absent from these restaurant menus to avoid sounding off any alarms. Others, however, were bolder, sneaking beef onto the menus — dishes like Bangladeshi beef tehari — to pique the interest of non-South Asian customers.

Indian American chef Hetal Vasavada, a recipe developer and writer, competed on Season 6 of MasterChef when Gordon Ramsay and the gang made her recreate the chef’s famous beef Wellington. Vasavada, a vegetarian, rose to the challenge. She read through Reddit threads full of comments from uneducated viewers who weren’t familiar with India’s diversity, attempting to pigeonhole her. She had never cooked or tasted beef in her life, and the show’s fans saw that as a liability. They wanted her off the show. She relished her success in that environment. When it comes to celebrating holidays like Diwali, which is traditionally vegetarian, Vasavada keeps an open mind.

“I think because India is so vast and everyone celebrates it so differently, it’s hard to say what’s right and wrong. In the end, I truly do not care what you eat,” she says. “Practicing as a Hindu, an Indian American, I don’t eat meat, but if you want to eat meat, go for it — I am unbothered. Celebrate and eat however you choose. And I think we just need to be a little bit more open-minded and less pushy about our beliefs on others.”

Many objections to serving beef at Indian restaurants in America come from immigrants who long left South Asia and believe their hometowns or villages have stayed the same since they’ve left, Kalathil says. He wants to see more restaurants serve beef and pork. That philosophy is shared by many of his colleagues, including Sarkar. The old-fashioned mindset poses a danger to creativity.

“That is with all Indian food — not only the beef,” Sarkar says. “People still have an outdated understanding of how things should be.”