{"id":356568,"date":"2026-09-25T10:06:19","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T10:06:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/356568\/"},"modified":"2026-09-25T10:06:19","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T10:06:19","slug":"top-chefs-rasika-venkatesa-is-opening-new-indian-restaurant-mythily","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/356568\/","title":{"rendered":"Top Chef\u2019s Rasika Venkatesa Is Opening New Indian Restaurant Mythily"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Top Chef alum is turning her Tamil and South Indian pop-up into a standalone location<\/a> this fall: Rasika Venkatesa is opening Mythily<\/a> on Wednesday, September 30, in Williamsburg at 129 Havemeyer Street, between South First and Grand Streets. Her menu explores the Tamil Nadu state in the restaurant named after her grandmother. She\u2019s opening the 1,000-square-foot, nearly 40-seat space with her business partners, Varun Kandadi and Nicolas Chavotier.<\/p>\n

Growing up in her Tamil Brahmin household in Chennai, Venkatesa said her grandmother was \u201ca huge inspiration in my cooking career.\u201d After launching the pop-up in 2024, six months later, Venkatesa landed a four-month residency at the now-closed pop-up space Fulgrances<\/a> in Greenpoint. She built momentum when she was named one of Time Out New York\u2019s Best Young Chefs of 2025<\/a>.<\/p>\n

She\u2019d been prepping for her rise for a long time. Before competing in the 21st season of Top Chef in 2024<\/a>, she worked at San Francisco Moroccan restaurant, Mourad<\/a>, which is now closed. And before that, she was a commis at the French Laundry<\/a> in Yountville, California. Venkatesa realized through stints cooking elsewhere that she wanted to cook her own food. Mythily represents, she says, \u201cwhat Indian cuisine means to me as a South Indian, as a Tamil girl, as an immigrant, as someone who\u2019s queer in a community that predominantly hasn\u2019t been super queer supportive before.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Rasika Venkatesa. Natalie Black<\/p>\n

In a menu comprised of sections like snacks, small, and big, she\u2019s excited about the scallop crudo starter, served with Concord grapes and puli inji, a pickled tamarind-ginger-green chile condiment, and finished with a granita made of jaggery, ginger, and warming spices.<\/p>\n

Vegetables are also central to the menu. The Caraflex cabbage entree is slow-roasted with cumin, coriander, and turmeric, and then peeled and rebuilt with layers of a sorrel-coconut chutney. It\u2019s served on top of green lentils and mushrooms, both roasted and pureed. For other main courses, ranging from $30 to $50, there\u2019s a chicken ballotine with onions and stir-fried lentils; tilefish with romanesco and a black currant kosho (which can be veganized with kabocha squash), and short ribs with plums, maitake mushrooms, and bone marrow kozhumbu (a tamarind curry).<\/p>\n

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The Green Circle kozhi roulade at Mythily. Natalie Black<\/p>\n

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The tilefish dish at Mythily. Natalie Black<\/p>\n

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The filter coffee soft serve and rasmalai tres leches at Mythily. Natalie Black<\/p>\n

For dessert, she\u2019s bringing back the rasmalai-tres leches sweet she served during the Fulgrances residency. It\u2019s a take on the Bengali sweet<\/a>, which gets turned into a sponge cake soaked in saffron-cardamom milk and topped with whipped white chocolate, toasted pistachios, almonds, and orange zest. There\u2019s also a filter coffee soft serve with a peanut and jaggery brittle.<\/p>\n

The drinks menu emphasizes nonalcoholic and low-ABV options, making use of cordials and spice-infused shochus. The Kho Kho, a drink with hibiscus-infused shochu and a rosebud syrup, stems from a childhood game she played at school. The nonalcoholic Power Cut, a spiced black tea with fresh ginger juice and jaggery, invokes power blackouts in India during summer to save electricity. \u201cIt\u2019s like a slap in your face, but in a good way; you have a jolt,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

There are also beers from Brooklyn breweries and global wines.<\/p>\n

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The dining room at Mythily. Natalie Black<\/p>\n

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The bar at Mythily. Natalie Black<\/p>\n

The restaurant near the jam-packed restaurant block of Grand Street is awash in n deep reds, dark greens, and neutrals, and a mix of textures like wood, limewash, brass, Moroccan clay, and quartzite across the 33-seat dining room and nine-seat bar. Venkatesa and Kandadi designed the space with Studio Purisic<\/a>. She wanted to conjure the color palettes of Kanchipuram saris. A family friend, Aishwarya Ramanchandran, created an art piece depicting a grandmother feeding her granddaughter.<\/p>\n

Mythily will be open from Wednesday through Saturday, 5 to 10 p.m., and Sunday from 4 to 9 p.m.; book reservations on SevenRooms<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Top Chef alum is turning her Tamil and South Indian pop-up into a standalone location this fall:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":356569,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,11,10,3988,4958],"class_list":["post-356568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-nyc-restaurant-news","tag-nyc-restaurant-openings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}