Asia’s No. 1 Restaurant Was a Bangkok Emoji Counter
Gaggan Anand’s progressive Indian room stacked five Asia’s 50 Best No. 1 finishes, survived a 2019 reboot, and left later tasting menus a permission structure.
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Before the rankings and the emoji menu, Gaggan Anand was a Kolkata kid who wanted to drum for a living. He later cold-called Ferran Adrià’s El Bulli lab as a Taj trainee, chasing the Spanish kitchen’s technique work, then brought that toolkit back to Indian flavors in Bangkok. His yogurt explosion, a chaat-memory sphere that bursts on the tongue, was his answer to El Bulli’s spherified olive: yogurt as mother sauce, plated like modern fine dining.
Fifteen years on, his fourteen-seat counter on Sukhumvit 31 still runs as food theatre. Diners read courses as emojis, eat with their hands when asked, and sit through twenty-plus tastes that pull Indian street and home memory through French, Thai, and Japanese moves. Asia’s 50 Best named a Gaggan restaurant No. 1 five times across two chapters of the room. Progressive Indian tasting menus elsewhere still borrow the permission he proved there: Indian cooking can lead those lists, not trail a hotel buffet.
From Kidderpore to El Bulli
Anand grew up in Kolkata, schooled at St. Thomas Boys School in Kidderpore, then took a catering diploma at the institute in Kovalam, Thiruvananthapuram. He trained with the Taj Group in New Delhi, left for catering and home delivery work out of Tollygunge, and moved to Bangkok to cook contemporary Indian at a restaurant called Red. The city’s Indian rooms, he has said, did not want anything different. That frustration pushed him toward his own place.
A stage with Adrià’s research team at El Bulli made him the first Indian chef in that kitchen. He came back to Bangkok with a lasting brief: progressive Indian cuisine, street and household soul, techniques that looked like the rest of modern fine dining. Gaggan opened in December 2010 on Soi Langsuan. Word of mouth filled it; international press followed. Netflix’s Chef’s Table season 2 put his path, from a hard childhood to a Bangkok star, in living rooms that never planned a Thai reservation.
Four years at No. 1, then a hard reset
From 2015 through 2018, Gaggan held Asia’s No. 1 slot four years running, a streak the ranking body still treats as rare. The house language was irreverent on purpose: emoji menus so the night would not depend on one spoken language, rock-show energy, plates that asked you to lick or use your hands. Signature moves kept evolving, from yogurt explosion to charcoal Amritsari prawn and Holi-colored vegetable dyes. Once he trusted the room, he talked openly about dropping the comfort-zone chicken tikka and naan encore.
He had planned a clean 2020 close after a decade. A split with financial partners forced an earlier end. He resigned in August 2019 and lost the rights to the Gaggan name. On November 1, 2019, he opened independently as Gaggan Anand in a new Bangkok location. Covid hit months later. In 2021 the new room debuted at No. 5 on Asia’s 50 Best and took Highest New Entry. By 2024 he had reclaimed the trademark and restored the name Gaggan. In 2025 it sat at Asia’s No. 1 again, a fifth top finish across both eras, and No. 6 on the global World’s 50 Best list. Asia’s 2026 ranking had it at No. 3.
Permission, and its limits
After Bangkok, an Indian tasting menu could mean molecular play, playlist cues, and chile that still read as chaat. Chefs from Mumbai to New York did not need to copy the emoji card to inherit that argument: Indian cooking could compete on the same lists as Spanish and Japanese temples.
Anand is also a hospitality operator now: Ms. Maria & Mr. Singh in the same Sukhumvit building, Gaggan at Louis Vuitton in Bangkok, and the GohGan collaboration with Japanese chef Tsuyoshi Fukuyama in Fukuoka. Rankings move. Sister rooms are not the fourteen-seat mothership. A Bangkok spectacle does not describe how most South Asians eat, and it does not replace regional rooms like Semma that prove village cooking without the theatre. Both refuse to apologize for Indian flavor at the high end.
If you are trying to book
Treat it as a hard-to-get tasting counter with a high prix fixe, recently listed around THB 16,000 before drinks and service. Reservations open on a short window and fill fast. Confirm seat count, address, and booking rules on the restaurant site before you build a Bangkok trip around one night. Come for the full emoji run if you want the argument Anand built, and know the night is performance as much as dinner.