India, Aug. 22 -- By the time you read this, Gaggan Anand may have opened Raga on Delhi's iconic Janpath for previews. Raga is the most awaited restaurant opening of the last several years. I went for a pre-opening tasting and I was blown away. It is well on its way to becoming the best restaurant in India. Raga is a homecoming for Gaggan, but it is also the culmination of several unsuccessful efforts by the chef to open a restaurant in India, because serving food to his own people has long been Gaggan's dream. In 2016, he signed up to open a restaurant in Mumbai. At the last moment, the deal collapsed. And though Gaggan had other offers during that period (including at Atlantis in Dubai), he kept looking for a restaurant in India. He agreed to take over a space (the Mediterranean restaurant Syrah) at Delhi's Hyatt Regency, and ran a temporary restaurant (a residency) for two months. I was sceptical about how well it would do with a fixed menu at around Rs.50,000 per head. But to my astonishment, it was packed every night. Gaggan had the option of making the residency permanent, but he wanted to build a proper Gaggan restaurant from scratch. In 2025, Zorawar Kalra and his wife Dildeep dined at the flagship Gaggan restaurant in Bangkok. Kalra is a successful restaurateur who knew Gaggan but had never really eaten his food. This was ironic, because Kalra's restaurants had dishes that were clearly inspired ('stolen' is too harsh a word) by Gaggan, including his signature Yoghurt Explosion. Kalra says once he ate the real thing he knew at once that he had to open a restaurant with Gaggan. Gaggan liked the location that Kalra was offering: A prime spot on the historic Janpath. But he had specific requirements. Gaggan wanted the entire restaurant redesigned by his own architect. He wanted to import the crockery and cutlery from Japan. He wanted to import one machine that cost Rs.28 lakh. An ice-cream machine (used for just one dish) cost Rs.15 lakh. Kalra agreed to everything. He only disagreed with Gaggan about how much to charge. Kalra wanted to cap the set menu at around Rs.11,000. Gaggan, who had charged Rs.50,000 at his Hyatt residency thought this was too low. Eventually, Kalra prevailed and Gaggan saw his point: If you are calling it a homecoming, then don't price it so high that your friends and relatives can't come to your home. I went for dinner on Monday night. Early in our meal, Gaggan decided that the piped music was wrong and switched it to one of the playlists he had created for the Bangkok restaurant. I like good-looking restaurants. But for me, the most important thing is always the food. I knew it would be good because Rydo Anton, the chef who has been the backbone of all of Gaggan's restaurants, had shifted to India and rented a flat near Janpath to create the dishes. Gaggan has always acknowledged Rydo's role in his success, but this time he has put Rydo centrestage: Not only is the restaurant called Raga for the initials of Rydo Anton and Gaggan Anand, but Rydo is the actual chef. Gaggan does not wear his chef's uniform when he is in the restaurant and plans to go from table to table chatting to guests. I have eaten Gaggan's food so often that I wondered if he would be able to surprise me, given that all his greatest hits would be on the menu. I needn't have worried. Rather in the manner of a great rock band, which keeps tweaking and rearranging its hits when it plays them live, Gaggan and Rydo have made the classics seem fresh and exciting. This is the best version of the Yoghurt Explosion yet. The much-imitated Gaggan creation of golgappa pani in a sweet sphere is reinvented. And there are great new dishes. There is a cross between a vada pao and a Bombay sandwich. A soft-serve ice-cream has a perfect texture and deep saffron flavour. (Gaggan credits the very expensive ice cream machine.) The breakthrough is a tiffin (to the extent that fancy Japanese crockery layered together can be called a tiffin) of Tabak Maas; gobhi made to look like brain (the brain joke was once the funniest part of Gaggan's Bangkok monologues) and an incredible Nalli Nihari, which has all of the deep flavour of the best nihari and none of the greasiness. I suspect the Rs.28 lakh kitchen machine may have been purchased only because Gaggan and Rydo wanted to make a non-greasy nihari. It sounds heretical, but I may actually prefer it to Gaggan's Bangkok flagship, which is theatrical and wonderful, but which you can't keep going back to again and again. This is like a normal restaurant, where you can chat to the rest of your table and enjoy the meal that is of the same quality as the food in Bangkok. And you can keep coming back. Finally, Delhi, which has lagged behind Mumbai so much, may have the distinction of being the location of the best restaurant in India....