Leader of acclaimed Raleigh restaurant makes national ‘Chefs to Watch’ list

A young Triangle chef has landed on a national food magazine’s latest list of restaurant pros leading the industry.

The food magazine Plate named Raleigh’s Bhavin Chhatwani to its Chefs to Watch list, highlighting 15 up-and-coming restaurant leaders across the country.

Chhatwani, the chef of North Hills Indian restaurant Tamasha , is the only North Carolina cook in this year’s list. Plate previously honored North Carolina chefs Ashleigh Shanti and Justin Burdett and in past years.

“For a decade, we’ve featured Chefs to Watch in Plate , and each has a story about influences and inspiration from mentors, friends, and family, or simply their love of the craft,” Plate editor in chief Liz Grossman wrote in an introduction to the piece. “Over the years, we’ve added to the criteria of how we curate our list, from having a killer technique in the kitchen to community engagement and business and labor acumen that we can all learn from.”

Tamasha is one of Raleigh’s newest restaurants but has already had an out-sized impact. Earlier this year it was included in Open Table’s list of the 50 most beautiful restaurants in America.

Barely open six months, Tamasha brought upscale Indian dining to North Hills. Owned by married couple Tina Vora and Mike Kathrani, Tamasha leans on Chhatwani’s experience cooking in luxury hotel kitchens in India and in the only two-Michelin-starred Indian restaurant in America, Campton Place in San Francisco.

In its feature on Chhatwani , Plate writer Caroline Hatchett highlights Tamasha’s version of kheema kaleji, calling it representative of the young chef’s cooking, “personal, modern but grounded, curious, and a bit gutsy.”

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