Nisheeth Tak

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Nisheeth Tak understands how to make a restaurant both authentic, and successful. And so he should, for he cut his teeth in Bombay working in the Taj Hotel Group's legendary Tanjore Restaurant, the very place which Camella Panjabi describes as “the turning point in the restaurant life of India... making it fashionable to go out and eat Indian food in an elegant atmosphere”.

Indian food in an elegant atmosphere: Mr Tak has creating those two things, ever since he arrived in Ireland in March 1990. We first met him when he worked in Dublin's Saagar restaurant, on Harcourt Street, in the early 1990's, when his confidence and polish brought a whole new element to ethnic dining. Suddenly, here was an ethnic restaurant with fine tableware and napery, serious glasses, a gleam in every detail, and with food influenced not by some vague concept of “Indian” cooking, but which took its cue directly from authentic Indian regional dishes.

Saagar was serious, and so was Mr Tak, and he was crusading in exactly the same way as Camellia Panjabi had crusaded when she set up London's distinguished Indian restaurants such as Bombay Brasserie, Chutney Mary and Masala Zone. “I believed India should offer an authentic glimpse of her ancient culture and heritage, rather than assume what a tourist might or might not like”, says Mr Tak.

From Saagar he moved to Poppadom in Rathgar, and met immediate success, again with the perfect balance of great food and an elegant room that caught the spirit of the booming time in Dublin 6. In 2003 came the move southside, to Rasam in Glasthule, and perhaps the finest distillation of his culinary and aesthetic formula. Rasam is unusual in that it is as beloved by critics as it is by the public – do the critics love the authenticity, whilst the punters love the aesthetic? The answer is that both love both, and that in Mr Tak's hands authenticity and aesthetic are intertwined. He has assembled a great crew in Rasam, the fruit of twenty years of searching. He has changed ethnic food in Dublin: he has made it better.

The Eagle Pub, 18 Glasthule Road, County Dublin
01 230 0600
www.rasam.ie