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I think a lot about how, if I could travel back in time and eat at one bygone American restaurant, it would be Floyd Cardoz’s Tabla. My colleagues in the food industry tell me all the time about the saag paneer pizza, the tamarind margarita, the Frankie cart. I crave these dishes that I’ve never even tried before. But I also crave the opportunity to experience that inflection point, when Floyd was first changing the course of Indian dining in America.
Before Floyd, and before Tabla, much of the discourse around Indian restaurants in America centred on the inexpensive buffets serving primarily anglicised Punjabi food—it was butter chicken and naan on repeat. Many Americans didn’t understand the regionality and nuance of Indian cooking, and so many talented Indian chefs simply didn’t have the platform to make meaningful change.
Except Floyd. Here was a person who had made it not just as an Indian chef, but as a chef, period. He had rose to prominence at Lespinasse, at the time one of New York’s most venerable French institutions, working from line cook up to executive sous chef. When he opened Tabla, in 1997, it changed everything. This was a high-end New York restaurant, with beautiful decorations, elegantly plated food, and, perhaps most importantly, regional Indian flavours. Floyd spent his upbringing between Bombay and Goa, and the tastes of those cities were front and centre in his cooking. He showed Americans that Indian food deserved all the care and attention and praise that for so long, had only been reserved for European restaurants. He earned three stars in the New York Times, multiple James Beard nominations, and a book deal—Flavorwalla, a full-throated ode to cooking with spices.
And yet, I don’t believe that Floyd’s contributions to American dining have ever been, or will ever be, fully recognised. After Tabla’s shuttering in 2010, Floyd’s first full solo venture, a non-Indian restaurant called White Street, was greeted with a lukewarm response, with many people saying they missed when he was cooking Indian food. And then when he did cook Indian food, with Paowalla (which turned into Bombay Bread Bar), the restaurant was never able to find a dedicated audience. I remember interviewing Floyd when he decided to rebrand Paowalla as Bombay Bread Bar in an effort to find a younger audience. He was sitting in the restaurant, drinking chai, spinning his wheels to try and figure out what it was, exactly, that New York diners wanted, if not his grandmother’s comforting, coconutty fish curry, or fluffy kulchas stuffed with cheese, or spicy lamb sandwiches spiked with cumin. All of those dishes were absolutely delicious. When Bombay Bread Bar closed last year, I still didn’t have the answers for him.
We were both asked to appear on the Indian food episode of Ugly Delicious. Separately, we both talked about how, even in 2020, Indian food is still sorely misunderstood in America. When the episode switched locations from Bombay Bread Bar in New York to his acclaimed Mumbai restaurant, the Bombay Canteen, you could see that Floyd was so much more at ease. In India, people understood how important his contributions have been to the diaspora. In America, I don't know that he ever got that validation.
The last time I saw Floyd was a few months ago, when my friend Chris and I went to a dinner he was hosting at the James Beard House for the Bombay Canteen. He was so happy that night. The food was thrilling. I stole a copy of the menu and kept it, because I wanted to remember all the delicious things I ate. After dinner was over, I approached Floyd, and told him that he needed to open a Bombay Canteen in New York, because it would be a hit. He gave me a kind, knowing, classically Floyd look and politely said, “No way. I am never opening another restaurant in New York.”
Looking back, I wish that at that dinner, I had told him that even if he never opens another restaurant, that Indian dining in America would not look like what it does today without him. That Indian restaurants get to be high-end and personal and regional and cross-cultural and succeed on a large scale—we can, in large part, thank Floyd Cardoz.
Priya Krishna is a New York-based food writer and author of the cookbook Indian-Ish: Recipes and Antics from a Modern American Family
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