#ELLEGourmetCoverStar: Niyati Rao Is Crafting Mumbai’s Culinary Future

At first glance, Chef Niyati Rao’s journey feels almost cinematic. A young woman who grew up finding refuge in her mother’s kitchen went on to cook at one of the world’s most celebrated restaurants, Noma. Then the pandemic struck, upending everything.

Out of that chaos, she built one of the most talked-about dining portfolios in Mumbai today — Ekaa, KMC Bar & Bistro, and Bombay Daak. Along the way, she and her partner Sagar Neve made it to Forbes’ 30 Under 30, and Ekaa debuted at #93 on Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants 51–100 list.

Rao’s leap wasn’t just professional, it was personal. Her journey has always been about instinct, resilience, and an almost mischievous hunger to try what others shy away from. “Honestly, I always thought I’d open my first restaurant when I was 32,” she laughs. “I told my mother this all the time. Then Ekaa opened when I was 27. Life works in mysterious ways.”

That same willingness to defy expectations shapes the way she cooks and creates. In conversation, she’s warm, unguarded, and witty, but beneath the casual tone lies a razor-sharp clarity about her craft. 

She doesn’t just see herself as a chef plating food but as a storyteller, a cultural excavator, and a disruptor. “When you create something new today,” she says, “it has the power to trickle down — into smaller establishments, into the streets, into people’s homes. That’s how cuisines evolve.”

Finding Voice In Chaos

Growing up in Mumbai, Rao found her solace in food. “I was not great academically, and in the ’90s in India, that could really send you into a spiral,” she recalls. Diagnosed with a learning disability early on, she discovered happiness in cooking alongside her mother, a food-loving scientist who left her career to spend more time with the kids. “After depressing days at school, I’d run into the kitchen. My mom would always be making something new, and I loved that. That’s where I wanted to be.”

Her career path followed the classic arc — culinary school, training at the Taj, and a stint at Copenhagen’s fabled Noma. But when COVID-19 shut the world down, Rao found herself jobless and back in India. 

“Forget jobs, people were being laid off,” she says. 

But out of that uncertainty came an unexpected spark: a Facebook message from her old friend and now business partner, Neve. “We kept talking through the lockdown, and that’s how Ekaa was born. It was a miracle.”

What began as a lockdown dream soon grew into one of Mumbai’s most compelling dining rooms. At Ekaa, food, memory, and storytelling collide. “Sometimes, a course is inspired by something as simple as tomato soup and breadsticks on a Rajdhani train. For many guests, it brought back childhood memories. For others, it was a cultural discovery. Food becomes a shared story,” she explains.

Breaking Rules to Owning Spaces

If Ekaa is a temple of taste, Bombay Daak is pure rebellion. “People say, ‘Oh, you own a cocktail bar.’ No, I own a daru chakna bar!” Rao grins. For her, it’s about reclaiming pride. “In Spain, you go to tapas bars and in Japan, izakayas. But in India, people looked down upon daru and chakna. I thought, why not respect it? Why not study it?”.

Research for Bombay Daak took the team over a year, talking to nonagenarians about what their parents ate and drank during parties, and unearthing a forgotten culinary branch: India’s drinking food culture. “It was emotional,” she says. “It blew us away how smart Indians were about drinking and eating together. We don’t need to understand wine; we already have our own systems.”

The idea clearly struck a chord: Bombay Daak just celebrated its first anniversary. In a city where restaurants open and shut in the blink of an eye, Rao is thrilled to see the concept grow into a space that regulars feel proud of. “It’s been a year of experimenting with pairings, with unapologetic desi nostalgia, and seeing people embrace it with the same excitement we put into creating it. That’s been so rewarding.”

If Bombay Daak was born of rebellion, KMC was born of aspiration. “We always loved the gymkhana vibe, those bars that feel like someone’s elegant drawing room. But they were exclusive, membership-only, legacy-driven. We wanted to democratise that vibe,” Rao explains.

The result was KMC Fort, a bistro-meets-bar where classic cocktails meet soulful plates. “Fine dining has its place, but I love bistros. A French onion soup in a hole-in-the-wall bistro can sometimes taste better than anything in a Michelin-starred dining room — because the chef puts every bit of his experience into that bowl.”

The second KMC, located in Pirojshanagar, Vikhroli, offered a space to experiment, featuring an open bar, a fermentation and pickling room, and sourdough pizzas. “Each KMC is different. Fort was our test, Vikhroli was our expansion. And we’ll keep evolving and opening in different localities.”

Beyond Borders

The experimentation doesn’t stop at home. Most recently, Rao and her team were invited to the Dark Mofo festival in Tasmania — the first time an Indian chef was asked to headline the iconic Winter Feast. “So many Indian immigrants in Hobart told me they came because my name reminded them of home. They felt proud. And even though they’d never met me, I felt a connection,” she says.

But it wasn’t just the diaspora. Locals, too, showed up with curiosity. “We were more excited than anyone else,” Rao admits. “We’d never seen a wallaby before. We’d only heard of certain native berries and spices from the Aboriginal landscapes. That kind of cultural exchange, where you listen to people’s stories and cook with their ingredients – that’s invaluable.”

For Rao, that sense of curiosity isn’t limited to new landscapes. At home, too, she observes it closely. “The world thinks Indians are fussy eaters. They want their own food, their own spice. But what they’re doing is breaking monotony on the plate,” she insists.

And the best illustration of that, she says, is the thali: dal, sabzi, rice, roti, achar, something fried, something sweet. “We can’t eat one large plate of pasta without getting bored after four bites. We need contrast. We need excitement. That’s not fussiness, it’s instinct. And if you understand that, you can cook for anyone.”

It’s the same philosophy that Rao channels when she designs her menus — ingredient-driven, layered, and meant to excite bite after bite.

“If I see a tomato, I don’t think of makhani anymore. I think of so many other techniques. But the bottom line is: I must enjoy it myself. If I can’t finish a plate, I won’t serve it. Even my 80-year-old grandmother has finished 20-course meals at Ekaa. Fine dining is not about snobbery; it’s about technique and heart.”

The Road Ahead

What’s next for Rao is already in motion. Even with three successful ventures and international pop-ups, Rao’s imagination doesn’t rest. “We pride ourselves on our boulangerie programme. Guests tell us we make very good bread. So we’re working on a boulangerie-viennoiserie project. It’s going to happen very soon,” she hints.

There’s also a small but meaningful project brewing in northeast India — one of the reasons she’s constantly travelling these days. She won’t say more just yet, but the excitement in her voice says it all.

For a chef who first discovered her love for food in her mother’s kitchen, Rao has come a long way. Yet the thread remains the same: cooking as connection, food as story, and cuisine as a fearless leap into the unknown.

Quick Fires: 

Kitchen Nickname: Chef 

Comfort Dish After A Long Day: My mother's prawn curry and rice, or instant noodles 

Favourite Ingredient Right Now: Olive Barb (hagan in Assam)

Favourite Drink: Milk 

Food Trend You Wish Would Disappear: Putting mayonnaise in everything 

Dream City To Open A Restaurant In: Tokyo 

Favourite Song On Loop: Roja Poo Adivanthathu from Agni Natchathiram

Favourite Movie: The Mummy 

Your 3 A.M. Speed Dial Person: Nobody. I would never wake up from my sleep

Editorial Director: Ainee Nizami Ahmedi; Digital Editor: Isha Mayer; Photographer: Meetesh Taneja; Stylist: Idris Nidham; Jr Graphic Designer: Radhika Trivedi (Cover Design); Set Design: Purnima Nath; Food Stylist: Nikhil Bendre; HMUA: Daniel Bauer Academy; Claire Carmelina Gil (rep by Anima Creatives) for Suvir; Creative production: Anushka Patil and Rishith Shetty; Assisted by: Aafreen Anjum, Ishan Sharma (styling), Sneh Lad (creative production), Vaishnavi Rana; Production: Cutloose Productions.