I was told to come at 8 pm.
Event Context
So I did.
“For me, Pincode is an extension of my travels over the years to different cities of India,” chef Kunal says when he finally sits. “I am somebody who enjoyed travelling at an early age… the more I travel, the more I gather about the place, the cuisine, the culture, the community,” he adds.
That’s the brief for Pincode Bengaluru. Not another north Indian restaurant. Not the usual suspects.
“What I am merely trying to bring to Pincode in Bengaluru is a slice of my travels… a bit of pan-India,” chef Kunal says, adding, “We are mostly typecast as a north Indian restaurant. But if you look at the menu, it’s widely spread. In fact, even today, what you’re having is a good mix-and-match of many different places.”
And it is.
Goa is a 350-year-old Portuguese bungalow, he shares, while Bengaluru borrows from its colonial past — the round globes, the artefacts, the tall windows: “Just strokes of that era. But at the end of the day, the place still has to be comfortable, inviting, brightly lit.”
Being in a mall is also intentional, chef says: “In a city like Bengaluru, traffic sometimes becomes a bit of a nuisance. Parking is a major issue. And if it rains, thank you very much. Mall offers one of the easiest things: come, park, and forget. And then just enjoy and spend your time.”
26 years in, he says the job is about listening, and moving fast: “My turnaround time on correcting things is way faster now. If something is wrong, if I own up, it’s just easy. Art is a form of expression… but the person who is consuming that art also expresses what he or she feels about that art.”
During week one of Pincode in Bengaluru, he recalls being told: “Your food is sweet, sweet, sweet.” Translation: not spicy enough. “So we had to increase the spice level. With every place, your same dish, the recipe that was a hit in this pin code, may not be a hit in another pin code. You have to tweak it to the local taste. It’s a continuous gamble,” he says.
Player Focus
That’s Pincode. It’s not about performance. It’s about paying attention.
Team Analysis
For the first few minutes, I sat with chef Sadiya Khan, Pincode’s corporate chef, making small talk while the room filled up. Pincode by Kunal Kapur is tucked inside a mall in Bengaluru, which feels counterintuitive until you understand Bengaluru. Then in walked chef Kunal Kapur. No entourage. No spotlight. He pulled up a chair across from me, and we talked.
He got up. He checked on another table. He went to the kitchen. He came back.
Peach wood smoked tofu with lacto-fermented plum and lychee. Ajmeri kachori chaat with kadhi and khatta-meetha pumpkin. Amaranth and moringa coconut curry with ricotta. Kashmiri morels with an earthy apple reduction. Then comes the jackfruit kizhi. It arrives in a banana leaf, opened tableside. Inside is jackfruit, served with Malabar parotta, podi appalam, pachdi. It smells like Kerala in July and tastes like someone’s grandmother decided to cook for you. I’m still thinking about it.
We end with dal makhni, thayir sadam, and koat pitha with fleur de sel — sesame ice cream, jaggery caramel, and cherries. Elegant. Restrained. The kind of dessert that doesn’t shout.
At 11:30 pm I leave. I have photos of every plate. None with chef Kunal. He was busy — with guests, with chef Sadiya, with the restaurant team, with that second serving of curd rice.
Walking out into the empty mall, I’m thinking about sesame oil. About ₹2 for chaat. About dal pakwan on Sundays. And about a chef who, between running a restaurant group and opening in a new city, will still stop to ask for seconds of curd rice and call the cook out to say thank you.
Pincode isn’t trying to be the loudest table in Bengaluru. It’s trying to be the most human one. Where ‘pan-India on a plate’ isn’t a tagline. It’s dinner. And sometimes, it’s just curd rice.
Go. Order the jackfruit kizhi. Order the podi idli chaat. And if you see chef Kunal, ask him about pulao. He’ll come back to your table to answer.
The author was hosted by Pincode upon editorial invitation.
Match Outlook
That’s how the next three and a half hours went. Not a formal interview. Not a staged chef’s table. A conversation that kept finding me between services. By 11:30 pm, when I left, and midnight when I got home, I realised I’d just spent an evening that felt less like a restaurant review and more like being let in on something private. Also read | Chef Kunal Kapur’s diet secrets revealed: Here’s what he drinks every morning and eats for breakfast, lunch, dinner
But the moment that made the night feel exclusive happened in the middle of all that. On the menu for me that night was thayir sadam — curd rice with vadu manga, curd chilli, and cashews. Simple. Comforting. The kind of thing you don’t expect to be the star at a tasting menu.
Chef Kunal tried one spoon. Then he looked up: “Can I have more?”
He did. A full second serving.
And then he did something I’ve never seen a chef of his stature do. He called the chef who made the dish from the kitchen out to the dining room and said, “This is exactly what I needed.” Simple. Clean. Honest.
“This is what you need amidst all the travelling and work meetings your days are filled with. It’s nice. It’s simple,” he says, half to me, half to the chef.
It wasn’t performative. It was gratitude. For a dish, for a cook, for the idea that after 26 years, a bowl of curd rice can still stop a top chef in his tracks.
That’s when I understood Pincode. It’s not about spectacle. It’s about care.
In between courses, I admitted something silly: my go-to dinner at home is just tofu with sesame seeds and soy sauce. I expected a polite nod. Instead, chef Kunal called chef Sadiya over. For 10 minutes, they educated me on their go-to sesame oil brands, the depth of soy sauce, and wok heat.
A chef who has cooked in Dubai and Abu Dhabi was suddenly invested in my simple dinner.
And then the sleeper: Sindhi dal pakwan. “It’s dal with a little bit of matari, tamarind chutney, onion, tomato, and cucumber. It’s a very rustic dish. People normally wouldn’t expect it on our menu. And yet it’s there and does well,” chef Kunal says.
He tells me why it’s there: “My grandparents migrated from Lahore during partition. While growing up, we used to have dal pakwan at home on Sundays. That has kind of lingered on in my memory.”
I ask if all Pincodes feel the same. “There is a certain design language we try to keep similar. But we are also kind of breaking that pattern,” he says.
Three words for Pincode Bengaluru? He pauses, then says, “I don’t know how to put it in three words. But I think it will be unforgettable. Definitely, it gives you a sense of nostalgia. And it is something where you kind of see pan-India on a plate.”
If one dish embodies that, it’s chaat.
Chef Kunal says, “As a kid, my mom used to tell me that if I completed my homework, I would get ₹2 to eat whatever I wanted. And I used to save up that money to eat chaat. For me, chaat is sweet, sour, savoury, spicy, and umami all rolled into one. I always call it a mess. Look at a chaat. But when you taste it, it makes so much sense.”
In Bengaluru, that mess is podi idli chaat. “We were like idli ki kaun chaat khata hai? Kahan idli, kahan chaat (Who will eat idli chaat, we thought)?” he laughs, adding, “Thank god we didn’t listen to our heads. We went against the grain and said, ‘Let’s try this’. And this has been a super, super, duper success for us.”
What to order, according to chef Kunal
I asked chef Kunal what to order at his restaurant, and what not to miss. “I love dessert. Doodh wali bread is one of my favourites,” he says. “And I’m somebody who enjoys eating a lot of momos. The chicken and vegetarian momos with the chutney that we do, I think that’s brilliant,” the chef adds.
For non-vegetarians, he has a mission: “India runs on biryani, biryani, biryani; but I personally feel that pulao is no less… mutton pulao, if you eat here, you will fall in love. Pulao is inherently a non-vegetarian dish. That’s how it started with me, with yakhni.” For vegetarians, he recommends: “Vegetarian biryani, but specifically pulao.”
