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It’s immediately obvious when you walk in that Tamba is one of Las Vegas’s most ambitious new restaurants. Heavy double doors open to an arresting, high-ceilinged space that evokes a five-star hotel lobby. A DJ spins electro-Indian tunes that pulse out of invisible speakers hidden in the walls.
Then comes the food: On the warm, rounded tables of thick slab oak, chef Anand Singh — who earned fine dining credentials at Rosewood Las Ventanas in Cabo San Lucas — serves folded raw hamachi slices topped with tiny dabs of curry and a maroon-colored pool of tamarind ponzu that wouldn’t feel out of place at a Nobu. A proper spoon swipe indents a celeriac puree topped with edamame and microgreens next to a portion of banana leaf-roasted Chilean sea bass. The expansive menu features Japanese and Chinese cooking techniques, a raw bar, Hakka-influenced wok dishes, and upscale takes on familiar curry dishes. The kitchen employs a Josper oven in place of a tandoor.
Owner Sunny Dhillon’s parents operated a version of Tamba for over two decades as a casual curry specialist in a bustling strip mall along the southern end of the Las Vegas Strip. The new Tamba, which opened in January 2025, is ambitious and luxurious. It joins a growing slate of upscale, modern Indian spots across the country that have opened over the last decade. But Tamba looks and feels significantly different from those restaurants.
“We brought elements of the Nevada desert, Rajasthan desert in India, and Kyoto; it’s all there to give you a refined essence of India,” says Dhillon of the dining room. “There are 2,700 Kelvin lights to bring warmth, desert oak and white granite surfaces, and terrazzo floors — but it’s all simple because the food is loud.” Dhillon also took advantage of Vegas’s deep bench of seasoned hospitality veterans, bringing on staff from the Wynn Resort.
Tamba’s main dining room in Las Vegas. Anthony Mair
Much of the attention on Indian fine dining has concentrated elsewhere in the country, in New York, Chicago, or Texas. However, restaurateurs like Dhillon have quietly laid the groundwork for a boom in the Southwest over the last few years. In some ways they resemble their counterparts out east, with menus that incorporate pan-regional Indian specialties in upscale, swanky rooms; in others, they adapt to their unique setting, embodying desert themes and occupying strip mall spaces more common on the West Coast.
“People are loving the food here, and the clients are mostly Indian,” Singh says. While Indian fine dining attracts all sorts of customers, diasporic Indian and South Asian communities are driving much of the trend, often filling dining rooms. Among immigrant groups in the U.S., Indians have some of the highest median household income; they can now use that spending power at restaurants that vie for Michelin and 50 Best Restaurants accolades.
While Indian fine dining attracts all sorts of customers, diasporic Indian and South Asian communities are driving much of the trend.
About 20 percent of Tamba’s audience are locals of Indian descent. But, like many businesses in Vegas, Tamba also depends on tourists. The city welcomed 50,000 visitors from India in 2023, a 70 percent increase over the previous year. “Indians are now in every corporation, and with so many visitors here for conferences,” says Dhillon. “India is much more appealing globally.”
The team at Tamba aren’t the only ones going after the market. London’s renowned JKS group just opened a new location of two-Michelin-starred Gymkhana in the Aria resort and casino just a few miles north of Tamba (alongside a new location of another of their restaurants, Ambassador’s Clubhouse, in New York).
“We see Vegas as the center of America, since it attracts people from all over the country,” says JKS CEO Pavan Pardasani. “We’re seeing a lot of excitement from Gymkhana fans and are currently booked until the end of January.” The new location evokes the brand’s original design language of elite social clubs, with colonial touches and splashes of grandma-chic, but it’s twice as large as the one in London’s Mayfair.
Malai kofta from Kahani in Dana Point, Orange County. Ritz-Carlton, Laguna Niguel
Chef Sanjay Rawat garnishes a dish at Kahani. Ritz-Carlton, Laguna Niguel
Elsewhere in the region, California is home to 20 percent of Indian immigrants in the U.S.; while much of that community lives in the Bay Area, over 150,000 live in Southern California, and some Indian restaurants from elsewhere in the country have targeted LA for expansion. Baar Baar, originally from New York, opened in Downtown Los Angeles in 2023, while San Jose import Fitoor arrived in Santa Monica in 2024 (both dwell more in an upper-mid-range price point versus something aspirational).
Down in Dana Point, the Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel resort became a destination for blowout, six-figure, multiday Indian weddings, in part thanks to chef Sanjay Rawat’s extravagant menus. The events proved so successful that the hotel asked Rawat to build out the experience into a full-time restaurant, Kahani, which opened in late 2023, allowing the Mumbai-trained chef to display his work on a more regular basis. Colorful Indian artwork now shrouds the remnants of the steakhouse that used to inhabit the space.
The menu melds a seasonal California approach with familiar pan-Indian classics: Ahi tuna-studded bhel puri and spiced burrata with cherry tomatoes and strawberries work as lighter starters, while Chennai sea bass comes atop rounds of roasted delicata squash and a bean ragu.
Most nights, the dining room is filled with Orange County South Asians celebrating special occasions, some venturing from as far as Los Angeles or San Diego. Rawat says only 20 percent of diners are hotel guests. The chef also says regulars like to bring family or friends visiting from India or other U.S. states, showing Kahani off as a standard-bearing Indian restaurant.
Non-vegetarian tandoor sampler at Indibar in Scottsdale. Indibar
Meanwhile, over in the Phoenix area, the Indian community is much smaller; even so, Jonathan Rodrigues, managing partner of Indibar, which opened in April 2025 in Scottsdale, convinced executive chef Nigel Lobo to bring his talents to Arizona with the aim of building an entire restaurant group, starting first with upscale Indian food. The two grew up together in Dubai and Lobo circulated through top Michelin kitchens in Europe before the duo arrived in Scottsdale. To complement his own talents, the chef brought on tandoor specialist Ajay Negi, who has over 20 years of experience cooking Indian cuisine in Dubai, India, and the Maldives.
“There are a couple of other restaurants that have tried to do what we do, but I think there was still a gap that needed to be filled. No other places can do what we do with the attention to detail and two world-class chefs,” Lobo says. “We have so many different programs here, from dessert to tandoor to bread that we all make in-house, that it’s like having an entire culinary school here.”
Drawing from every possible regional Indian style, Indibar goes for a “greatest hits” menu. A sampler of tandoor-seared proteins includes a head-on tiger prawn, chicken touched with Afghan murgh spices, mint-covered lamb chop, and yuzu-tinged salmon, which all stride across the plate like the four Beatles across Abbey Road. Dots of beet chutney and curled garnishes look like they took 10 minutes to arrange.
Like Tamba, the restaurant evokes the desert; the interior design employs tasteful earth tones and jewelry-box lighting that glimmers like the sun setting over Arizona’s cactus-laden Sonoran Desert. Bartenders shake cocktails over a prominent counter, illuminated like a beauty boutique, against the far wall; a tiny window peeks into the kitchen, providing glimpses of the cooks inside. It’s ritzy enough to truly impress in a town like Scottsdale, which has the flash of Mastro’s, Maple & Ash, and Ocean 44 — big, brash steakhouses that tend to get the lion’s share of the area’s wealthy diners.
You wouldn’t know that from the outside. Indibar hides in a corner spot in a strip mall between a consignment store and a skincare studio; a Fogo de Chão stands out more prominently to passersby. Lobo and Rodrigues are betting that they can make the restaurant a destination unto itself for diners in Scottsdale and across Phoenix.
Indibar Scottsdale’s main dining room. Indibar
Indibar isn’t the only Indian diamond in the rough. Tamba is situated in a near-suburban outdoor mall located on a highly trafficked highway intersection about 15 minutes from Vegas’s most affluent neighborhoods. In the mostly quiet city of Hawaiian Gardens, just on the edge of Los Angeles and Orange counties, Shor Bazaar is in a similar situation.
The latter restaurant opened in February 2024 in a strip mall slot, wedged next to a Bank of America ATM that sits almost too close to the restaurant’s front doors. But walk inside to find an energetic room with strong blood orange and teal-painted walls, frosted windows that make it feel like golden hour in Lahore, and black-and-white photos of street food scenes from Pakistan and India. Founder and chef Imran “Ali” Mookhi, who also opened the Michelin-recognized Khan Saab Desi Craft Kitchen in Fullerton, might not have had the same budget for decor as Indibar and Tamba, but there’s a sumptuous feeling to the space.
Mookhi takes a similar approach to nearby Pakistani restaurants like Zam Zam in Hawthorne or Al-Noor in Lawndale, which serve pan-regional Indian dishes punctuated with their own regional specialties. The halal menu at Shor Bazaar doesn’t pull any punches with regards to finesse, and it feels like a level up from Moohki’s experience at restaurants like the Michelin Bib Gourmand Tumbi in Santa Monica and the now-closed Tantra in Silver Lake.
“There’s halal food out there, but nothing was trendy. Just a place you go [for a casual meal],” says Mookhi, who offers something completely different than any other restaurant in the area.
A shatteringly crisp dosa arrives redolent with ghee and fillings of masala potato and beef keema. Afghan mantu are mounted on an elevated ceramic plate resembling a cloud, just five dumplings to an order but delectable and precise. Tandoor-grilled beef sirloin arrives with a puff of smoke released from a glass enclosure at the table. Peshawari-style chicken karahi is loaded with enough spices, garlic, ginger, and minced chiles to make one forget about butter chicken.
Dosa and accompaniments at Shor Bazaar. Shor Bazaar
Shor Bazaar’s colorful interior in Hawaiian Gardens. Shor Bazaar
For dessert, airy foam daulat ki chaat with dried rose and crumbled pistachio doubles down on the whole “crazy rich” vibe with edible gold and a printed edible rice cracker in the form of a $100 bill. Ostentatiousness is part of the point.
“We keep our menu short and simple rather than having a bible menu like at ordinary desi restaurants.” Mookhi says. “Our focus was on how to make the food appealing; that’s why we incorporated flavors from Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan.”
Like Indian restaurants in other markets, Shor Bazaar has to balance market demands with personal goals. Over at Tamba, Dhillon says the kitchen adapted food to be “non-abrasive and non-spicy so that everyone can be a client,” reflecting ongoing stigmas against Indian cuisine. At the same time, Singh says, the Tamba team is “already thinking about taking butter chicken off because we want to live up to a higher standard,” reflecting the backlash percolating against the popular dish among some chefs.
These restaurateurs and chefs are part of a broader conversation about cuisine, class, and authenticity that continues to play out across the country. It’s too early to say how far ambitions will reach in the Southwest, but these restaurants have cemented Indian cuisine as a nationwide standard for fine dining.
“It’s good to see people are taking initiative with doing Indian and Pakistani food and putting it into bigger scenes,” says Mookhi. “It’s finally time to step up and be proud of our own food and culture.”
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