Semma

Semma sits at 60 Greenwich Avenue in the West Village, in the narrow room that once held Unapologetic Foods’ Rahi. Chef Vijay Kumar, from Tamil Nadu rice-paddy country and later California kitchens including Burlingame’s Rasa, partners with Roni Mazumdar’s Unapologetic Foods group (Dhamaka, Adda, and siblings). The house frames the cooking as personal and regional South Indian: farm and family memory, not a pan-Indian tasting script. Semma opened in 2021 and earned a Michelin star the following year; the restaurant site still leads with that Michelin recognition alongside later “best of” list placements.

This is a special-occasion Manhattan room that still cooks offal, snails, and serious chile heat. The Infatuation rates it 8.9 and treats it as one of the best Indian meals in the country. Compared with sibling Dhamaka’s Essex Market canteen energy, Semma is the tighter, more intimate date: wooden tables, bamboo-leaning dining-car feel, and a bar that absorbs some of the reservation pressure.

Critics center the same plates. Michelin’s guide copy highlights mulaikattiya thaniyam (sprouted mung, coconut, smoked chili), gunpowder dosa with potato masala, Dindigul-style goat biryani on seeraga samba rice, and flaky parotta. The Infatuation pushes gunpowder dosa, Mangalorean cauliflower, Chettinad venison, Goanese oxtail with coconut rice, and the limited whole Dungeness crab (Kanyakumari nandu masala) when you can lock one. Time Out quotes Padma Lakshmi calling the menu a love letter to South India and flags childhood snacks and kudal varuval (goat intestines) as the house thesis.

Public chatter matches the critical script: hard reservations, high spice, servers who explain unfamiliar dishes, and a room that feels more polished than a Queens corridor counter. Vegetarians can eat well (dosa, uttappam, mirchi ka salan, cauliflower), but meat and seafood plates dominate the conversation. A few diners find heat levels uncompromising; that is the point of the Unapologetic pitch rather than a bug.