Jashan, an Indian fine dining restaurant approaching its anniversary on Nov. 13. The restaurant’s recognition in the Michelin Guide has been another milestone for owner Prasanna Singaraju,
More than two decades ago, sitting on a beach in Goa, India, Prasanna Singaraju made a promise to himself. Someday, he would open a restaurant.
At the time, it was little more than an idea shared among friends. But while most of them eventually forgot about the conversation, Singaraju never did.
Today, that promise has become Jashan, an Indian fine dining restaurant approaching its anniversary on Nov. 13. Less than a year after opening, the restaurant has already earned recognition in the Michelin Guide – the first Indian restaurant in the Metroplex to do so.
For Singaraju, however, the restaurant’s beginnings have as much to do with family as they do with food.
A longtime technology entrepreneur who attended Southern Methodist University and worked for Cisco Systems before founding his own company in 2015, Singaraju spent much of his professional life outside the restaurant industry. Though he had been an avid home cook for more than 25 years and occasionally helped friends with their restaurants, he had never pursued cooking professionally.
That changed in November 2023, when his wife called to tell him she was pregnant.
The news prompted him to think about his father, who died in 2006, and the lessons he hoped to pass along to his own child.
“My dad was my role model – is my role model – for a lot of things,” he says. “He remains one of the biggest influencers in my life.”
Among those lessons was the importance of following through on promises. On his flight home, Singaraju made a list of things he had always wanted to accomplish but hadn’t. Three stood out: becoming a pilot, becoming a chef and opening a restaurant.
He enrolled in flight school, graduated from culinary school and began turning his longtime restaurant dream into a business.
Jashan, whose name reflects the idea of celebration, was envisioned as both a celebration of Indian culture and a place for people to celebrate life’s everyday moments.
The restaurant’s menu draws inspiration from India’s royal kitchens, the culinary traditions of Singaraju’s hometown of Hyderabad and the seafood-focused cuisines of India’s coastal regions.
Rather than focus on the Indian dishes most familiar to American diners, Singaraju wanted to introduce guests to the country’s broader culinary traditions.
“There’s such diverse cuisines. There’s so many different flavors,” he says, noting that traveling even a relatively short distance in India can introduce an entirely different regional cuisine.
Jashan, an Indian fine dining restaurant. Photography by Kathy Tran
The menu changes seasonally, with dishes developed around ingredients the kitchen can source consistently. Singaraju imports spices from India monthly and emphasizes preparing ingredients in-house rather than purchasing ready-made components.
One of Jashan’s more unusual offerings is its Indian omakase experience, a chef’s table tasting menu inspired by the Japanese dining tradition of leaving the meal’s selections to the chef.
The experience features between 16 and 23 courses, depending on the season, with dishes that typically aren’t available on the restaurant’s regular menu.
Guests don’t receive a menu at the beginning of the evening. Instead, the dishes are revealed throughout the roughly three-hour experience, accompanied by stories about their ingredients, cultural origins and preparation.
A completed menu is provided at the end.
Singaraju said the approach allows the kitchen to respond to seasonal availability and incorporate ingredients that might not have been planned weeks in advance.
“If I found some squash blossoms and they’re gorgeous, this is going on the menu for course eight,” he says.
Although the chef’s table can accommodate 20 guests, Singaraju said he prefers serving around 14, allowing for a more personal experience. Preparation takes approximately eight hours before service begins.
A new tasting menu is expected to debut in November, around Jashan’s first anniversary.
Aside from the omakase experience, Jashan also offers a guided menu through each of the restaurant’s chefs’ methods and traditions. Or, guests can choose from the a la carte menu, which starts with an Amuse-Bouche of coconut water, rose water, lime, and salt in a shot glass and ends with a traditional Indian digestif petit four: Aam Masala Papad and Anar Goli.
Straight from the a la carte menu are small bites like Dahi ke Bhalle, which includes lentil dumplings, yogurt, tamarind and chaat spice ($18) or venna dosa, a buttery crepe-like dish made with a house batter, chutneys, sambar and potato masala ($20).
Also on the main menu are comfort foods like Jashan-e-Butter Chicken, a hand-pulled tandoori chicken with smoked tomato and cultured butter ($35) or Dal Makhani, a Punjabi dish with slow-cooked black lentils and cultured butter ($25).
The restaurant’s recognition in the Michelin Guide has been another milestone for Singaraju, who said he was overwhelmed when he learned the news.
“I cried, too, quite frankly,” he says. “Did I expect it? No. Did I want it? Yes.”
But rather than viewing the recognition as a finish line, he encouraged his team to approach every service as an opportunity to improve.
“Every day is day one,” he says.
Singaraju credits much of the restaurant’s development to the small team that joined him in the venture, including his wife, who previously worked at Texas Instruments, and general manager Sridhar Aemalla, who relocated from Austin to help build the business.
Unlike his previous ventures in technology, Singaraju chose to finance the restaurant without outside investors, a decision he said allows him to maintain control over the ingredients, service and dining experience.
He also opted to build the restaurant’s customer base primarily through word-of-mouth rather than a large marketing campaign.
Nearly a year after opening, he describes business as steady, with interest continuing to grow.
He hopes Jashan can create that same sense of connection, whether through a familiar spice, a dish that recalls a family recipe or an introduction to a culinary tradition guests have never experienced.
“Food is very personal to me,” he says. “In my house, when we were growing up, we had a rule: one meal always together. So, food brought us together.”
For Singaraju, Jashan is more than a restaurant. It’s proof that a promise made decades ago, even one that seemed unlikely at the time, is worth keeping.
And while earning a place in the Michelin Guide may be a milestone in his culinary journey, the accomplishment that matters most is one much closer to home: being able to tell his daughter that he followed through on his dreams.
“I can at least tell my daughter confidently that, yeah, whatever I said I would, I did,” he says. “And you should also.”
Jashan, 7401 Lone Star Drive, 469.994.9955
Jashan, an Indian fine dining restaurant. Photography by Kathy Tran