Unapologetic Foods: The Restaurant Group That Refuses to Compromise

The Origins of Unapologetic Foods

What is now one of New York City’s most celebrated restaurant groups began with two people meeting through a mutual friend to open an Indian restaurant in Greenwich Village. Pandya had cooked in several fine dining restaurants, including the Michelin-starred Indian restaurant Junoon, while Mazumdar helped his father run Masalawala, a beloved casual spot on the Lower East Side. The space where Semma now stands was originally home to Rahi, their first collaboration. When it opened in 2017, it went largely unnoticed. A year later, though, they returned with a clearer vision for their second restaurant, Adda Indian Canteen, in Long Island City. At that point, building a restaurant group was still far from their minds.

“I remember the first few weeks that we opened up Adda. We were printing the menu on A4 size paper, and Chintan was going to all the offices and distributing the menus,” Mazumdar recalls. “It was more survival mode at that time.”

Still, the two found an unlikely synergy and eventual success.

“We believed in the same thing, but we were two radically different individuals, and we still are,” says Pandya. “I think part of our strength is that we are so incredibly different from each other. There are things that I know I wouldn’t think about if it wasn’t for him.”

The two quickly hit their stride with Adda, bringing foodies out to Long Island City before it was a dining destination. And this initial, quiet success is what led to the formation of Unapologetic Foods.

“What really needs to work [for a hospitality group] is that you need to have one singular, unwavering vision that you just will die on that hill on any given day,” says Pandya. “And that’s what I think we’ve done.”

As for the name, Pandya first thought of calling the restaurant Adda: Unapologetic Indian, and the word “unapologetic” kept coming up. At one point, Mazumdar mentioned it to a Queens journalist, who used it in her headline about Adda in a local newspaper. When a new customer later came in saying he’d visited because of that article—and because he wanted to try the kind of food described there—Mazumdar knew the name would stick.

Still, Mazumdar and Pandya never wanted to limit themselves to Indian restaurants, so the name Unapologetic Foods—rather than Unapologetic Indian—made the most sense.

“We always knew that somewhere, the same way that we might have felt overlooked or dismissed as a cuisine, there are many others,” says Mazumdar. “We have a responsibility and opportunity as a group to represent the real voices of people.”

The Mission

The core mission of Unapologetic Foods is simple: all food is equal. This idea grew out of Mazumdar and Pandya questioning how Indian cuisine is viewed around the world.

“I think that when we look down upon food, various cuisines—which we all do—secretly so, or inherently so, we’re dismissing cultures of cuisines,” says Mazumdar. “One of our missions is, how do we tell our story without compromise? How do we make sure that we are in the same conversations and dinner tables as anyone else, or any other cuisine? Indian cuisine is one of the most storied and one of the oldest cuisines of this planet, yet there are people who have gone by their entire life, and never tried it, and it’s completely normal. Why?”

These questions shaped the restaurants that Unapologetic Foods opened after Rahi. Adda marked the first time in his career that Pandya felt he was truly cooking for himself, not for a particular guest. That realization sparked the creation of a hospitality group united by one mission: to never apologize for a cuisine or culture, but to share both as widely as possible.

A Restaurant vs. a Restaurant Group

Because Unapologetic Foods places such importance on people’s cultures and stories, the driving force behind the group is the team—beyond Mazumdar and Pandya—and the trust placed in them to carry that mission forward. Everyone who works at their restaurants shares the same vision of equality in food.

“A restaurant is what you own. A group is what your team owns. It’s two very different things,” explains Mazumdar. “When you own that restaurant, you are at the very center of it. But a group is when you enable and empower others to reach for that same vision you’ve set out for.”

In fact, the founders trust their team so much that they now see themselves as the least important players. “If there are two individuals who are most irrelevant in this organization, it’s us,” says Pandya. “If both of us are not there, this company would still sustain itself.”

This philosophy also led the group, in 2024, to debut their first non-Indian restaurant: Naks, a Filipino concept helmed by Eric Valdez, former chef de cuisine of Dhamaka and a native of Manila.

There Is No Formula

While most restaurant groups rely on an operational playbook and strict standards, the secret to Unapologetic Foods is that uniformity is never the goal.

“This has been a fear of ours for a long time—since the very beginning as a group—that as it grows, it starts to feel like it’s more of the same,” says Mazumdar, who adds that the most obvious path would have been to open 20 more Addas. “We’ll never do a licensing deal; every restaurant under Unapologetic Foods is owned and run by us.”

Instead, they’ve taken the riskier route of opening entirely unique restaurants. What remains consistent is the philosophy, filtered through each chef’s perspective, their cuisine, and the neighborhood where the restaurant lives. A second Adda will soon open in Philadelphia, but it will look and feel markedly different from the New York original.

“We want our locations to have a sense of soul and life around them,” says Mazumdar. That may also explain why, for now, all their restaurants are below 14th Street—downtown neighborhoods where energy, character, and imperfection still thrive.

Another essential part of the equation is design and atmosphere. Unapologetic Foods restaurants are anything but stuffy. They’re loud, boisterous, brightly colored, and a little messy in the best way. They’re thrilling.

“We as a company, believe in fun dining,” says Pandya. “We are not fine dining, we are fun dining.”

Mazumdar explains it as building the “most imperfectly perfect restaurants.” Design-wise, this means details like crooked tiles, fading paint, rusted metal, and what he calls the soul of the space. These touches make the loud, flavorful food stand out even more.

“If you’ve ever seen photo shoots that happen where somebody is in crazy designer clothes in like, the most broken-down background, the most rustic place, it’s these two opposing thoughts colliding together,” explains Mazumdar. “That’s our philosophy for how we are building the restaurants. Nobody does goat testicles in an $11 billion development in the Lower East Side, it doesn’t make sense. We look at the collision of these opposing forces, and that’s something we’ve always been excited about.”

A Strong Infrastructure with the Same Mission

Even though each restaurant is distinct, there’s a strong infrastructure supporting every project. By the end of 2022, Mazumdar and Pandya realized they couldn’t handle everything themselves. Mazumdar built internal departments for operations, human resources, finance, and digital media instead of hiring outside firms, because it mattered that even those teams believed in the Unapologetic Foods mission.

“Me and Pandya are pretty good at some things, but we’re not great at many things, and that’s for all of us as human beings,” says Mazumdar. “Our goal is to build a company and bring in people who are far superior than us in every single one of these facets. I think that’s the core of what it takes to build a hospitality company, a team.”