Inside Restaurant Week India 2026: How to book, where to go, and what it says about dining today
Restaurant Week India (RWI) is back this April after a decade out of circulation, but it returns to a dining culture that no longer needs an introduction.
Running from April 24 to May 3 across Mumbai, Delhi-NCR, and Bengaluru, the 2026 edition brings together over 55 restaurants offering three-course prix-fixe menus priced at ₹1,500 for lunch and ₹1,800 for dinner. Reservations are mandatory and prepaid, and will be managed exclusively through the festival’s official booking platform, developed in partnership with Putting Scene, the Bengaluru-based social platform and curator of offbeat cultural experiences. Diners can browse participating restaurants and secure tables via the website (rwi.puttingscene.com), with general bookings opened on April 17.
The list includes The Bombay Canteen and Americano in Mumbai, Bar Sama in Bengaluru, and Inja and Adrift Kaya in the capital region.
The menu at Inja
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Special arrangement
A new shift
When the festival first took shape in the early 2010s, its appeal was straightforward. A fixed-price, multi-course meal made it easier to try restaurants you might have otherwise saved for a special occasion, or avoided because you did not quite know how to approach them. It familiarised diners with structure, with pacing, and with the idea that a menu could guide the experience rather than leave you to assemble it course by course. At the time, that felt new.
What has shifted since then is not just scale, but behaviour.
On the Kappa Chakka Kandhari menu
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According to Fortune Business Insights, a market intelligence and growth advisory services provider, India’s food service market has crossed $114 billion (₹9.46 lakh crore) in 2025 and continues to grow. More tellingly, industry data reported via LinkedIn News shows ₹1.9 lakh crore spent on food through UPI in just the first half of FY26, a 34% increase year on year. Eating out has folded into routine, but with a sharper edge; people are going out more often, but they are also paying closer attention to where they go and why.
“What’s happened in India’s kitchens over the last 10 years is nothing short of a quiet revolution,” says Nachiket Shetye, mentor, RWI, “A decade ago, the conversation around Indian dining was still largely apologetic, as if great food here was a pleasant surprise rather than an expectation. Today, that’s unrecognisable. We have chefs who trained in some of the world’s best kitchens and chose to come back, not to replicate what they learned abroad, but to interrogate their own culinary inheritance with fresh eyes.”
The shift he describes is not only about what is happening in the kitchen, but how it is being received. “People stopped eating out and started going out, with intent, with curiosity, with opinions,” he continues. “They read, they research, they remember. They follow chefs the way they follow filmmakers.”
That change in the diner has reset the expectations placed on a festival like this.
It is something co-founder Gauri Vij, who is also a journalist, acknowledges. “The most exciting thing happening in Indian restaurants right now is that the best of them are setting their own benchmarks,” she says. “They’re not measuring themselves against Copenhagen or New York. They’re asking what it means to cook with integrity in this country, with these ingredients, for these people.”
Across the restaurants in this year’s line-up, that expectation shows up as a balancing act. A festival menu has to open the door without flattening what makes a restaurant distinct.
On the Kappa Chakka Kandhari menu
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Special arrangement
At Kappa Chakka Kandhari, one of the participating restaurants in Bengaluru, Chef Regi Mathew describes the format as “a bridge between our loyal patrons and first-time diners”. “For returning guests, it offers our signatures and curated ‘greatest hits’, dishes that have defined our journey and that diners keep coming back for. At the same time, for new diners discovering the brand during RWI, it serves as an accessible introduction to our cuisine, one that is rooted in Kerala’s culinary heritage but interpreted through our lens of contemporary dining.”
That calibration extends into philosophy. “My philosophy has always been about celebrating regional home-style cooking,” he says. “So the menu reflects that ethos — familiar yet exploratory, allowing guests to experience the depth of Kerala’s micro-cuisines in a compact but layered format.”
The Kappa Chakka Kandhari menu for RWI moves through toddy shop-style small plates like coconut prawns, calamari tawa fry, and chicken cutlets, before settling into more grounded mains — idiyappam with fish thengapal curry, nei choru with mutton and potato, or appam paired with a gently spiced stew. The vegetarian menu includes banana blossom vadas, jackfruit cutlets, and koorka roast leading into ullitheeyal, okra curry, and vegetable stew. Desserts include familiar favourites, from tender coconut pudding to filter coffee pudding and payaru payasam.
At Inja, another participating restaurant, Chef Adwait Anantwar approaches the format with similar restraint. “Restaurant Week brings in a lot of first-time diners,” he says, “but we don’t want the menu to feel like a simplified version of what we do.”
That balance shows up in a menu that stays true to Inja’s Indo-Japanese lens, moving from small plates like palak paneer tempura, gobi 65, and kushiyaki-style chicken wings to more layered mains such as edamame kulcha or udon with Khasi black sesame curry. Even desserts, from yuzu mishti doi to chickoo tempura, lean into that cross-cultural play without losing clarity.
Gauri is clear about what that demands from restaurants. “Rigour is rigour. We look for kitchens where the fundamentals are impeccable — sourcing, consistency, the ability to execute at a high level, service after service, not just on a good night,” she says.
That standard becomes most visible once service begins. A full dining room compresses time, and it is here that kitchens tend to reveal their priorities.
Bar Paradox
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gokul
Even at Mumbai’s Bar Paradox, where the tone is looser and more social, Chef Varun Totlani builds the menu around how people actually want to eat in that space. “We’ve curated dishes that I believe represent Paradox best,” he says. “We’re a cocktail bar where the food menu has global sharing plates, anything that encourages community-style eating, lots of dishes, free-flowing drinks, conversations, all the ingredients that bring people together.”
Bar Paradox
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gokul
That instinct carries through even within a set format. “It was a fun challenge,” says Varun, “because despite it being a fixed menu, I still want first-time guests to feel the vibe that Paradox is known for.”
The menu reflects that looseness, from a pomelo and smoked water chestnut salad with Thai chilli dressing to a mushroom and edamame sando, ending on something lighter like berries with stracciatella and meringue.
And yet, he circles back to something more grounded, almost as a corrective to everything else: “At the end of the day, it’s a hearty plate of delicious food that matters most to guests.”
