Avartana, ITC Maurya: The South Indian Food We Actually Deserve

Address: Rooftop, ITC Maurya, Sardar Patel Marg, Diplomatic Enclave, Chanakyapuri, Delhi 110021

Timing:  Wednesday to Monday, 7:00 PM – 11:00 PM | Sunday Lunch: 12:30 PM – 2:45 PM

Cuisine: South Indian

Average Cost:  Meal for Two: ₹7,500 approx

Let's be honest about something. When we hear "South Indian food" in Delhi, our brains immediately go to: idli, sambar, dosa, coconut chutney, maybe a vada if we're feeling adventurous. It's the default. It's comfortable. And it is — with all the love in the world — a little basic.

South Delhi people love a mix prints. We layer jewellery. We put tahini in places tahini was never meant to go and call it elevated. So why, for the love of filter coffee, were we still expecting our South Indian food to show up the same way every single time?

Enter Avartana. And with it, the realisation that South Indian cuisine has been sitting on a gold mine and only one restaurant had the vision to actually dig.

What Is Avartana?

Avartana first opened in Chennai at the ITC Grand Chola in 2017, quickly became one of ITC's most celebrated culinary ideas, and has since travelled to Mumbai, Kolkata, Colombo — and now, finally, Delhi. It sits on the rooftop of ITC Maurya in Chanakyapuri, and it is, without any exaggeration, one of the finest dining experiences this city currently has to offer.

Pronounced 'avartan' — a Sanskrit word meaning rhythm, mysticism, and magic — the restaurant explores new frontiers of Southern Indian gastronomy, delivering modernist expressions while staying firmly rooted in traditional flavours and ingredients. In plain English: they took everything you thought you knew about South Indian food and reimagined it entirely, course by course, with the kind of precision and creativity that makes you feel like you're watching a chef show off — in the best, most generous possible way.

It is also listed on Asia's 50 Best Restaurants. So yes. We're talking about that level.

The Format: A Tasting Menu, But Make It South Indian

There is no à la carte here. Avartana runs on degustation menus — multiple courses, each one a small, composed, carefully considered dish that builds on the last. The menus include Anika (thirteen courses), Bela (nine courses), Jiaa (eleven courses), Maya (seven courses), and Tara — a thirteen-course seafood-exclusive menu for those who want the full ocean experience. You pick your menu, you settle in, and you let the kitchen take you somewhere.

The dining experience takes between 70 to 90 minutes — a leisurely journey through multiple small courses, each paired with signature cocktails, mocktails, wines, or spirits. Rasam in a martini glass. Seafood paired with fine wine. A fermented chilli idli that makes you do a double take and then immediately wish there were two of them. This is not the South Indian food of your local Udupi joint. This is South Indian food dressed up, showing out, and absolutely justifying every rupee.

The Food: Familiar Flavours, Completely Unfamiliar Forms

Here is where Avartana earns every bit of its reputation. The philosophy of the kitchen: take an ingredient, a spice, a technique you recognise from Southern Indian cooking — and approach it from an angle you've never seen before. The result is food that feels both completely new and oddly like coming home.

Think a palm-sized idli punched through with fermented chilli and shrimp emulsion. Think Asparagus and Coconut Stew with Turmeric and Coconut Idiyappam — delicate, luminous, the kind of dish that makes you wonder why asparagus was ever cooked any other way. The Uttukuli Chicken, prepared with a special masala and served with a Malabar paratha, is one of those dishes the table talks about on the way home. And the Tara seafood menu — an entire sequence dedicated to the ocean, course after course of fresh sea fare in reinvented forms — is for anyone who wants to understand what progressive Indian cuisine is actually capable of.

Every dish is a small event. Every plate looks like it was assembled by someone who genuinely cares whether you gasp a little when it arrives. Most of them will make you gasp a little.

The Setting: Rooftop ITC Maurya, So Yes, It's That Serious

Set atop ITC Maurya with sweeping views of the green ridge, the 54-seater space feels intimate yet expansive — warm lighting, clean lines, a contemporary sensibility that mirrors the cuisine: modern but deeply rooted in Southern heritage. Rustic earthenware, ornate steel cutlery, and elegant glassware lend a tactile richness to the table, while the interactive kitchen adds a touch of theatre.

It is a beautiful room. The kind you dress for. The kind where you actually put your phone away for a bit — not because you're told to, but because the experience in front of you is genuinely more interesting than your screen. On a winter afternoon for Sunday lunch, with sunlight across the room and the ridge in the background? It becomes something else entirely.

The service matches the setting. The staff explain every course with warmth and genuine enthusiasm — not in a rehearsed, robotic way, but like people who are actually proud of what they're bringing to your table. And they should be.

The Verdict: This Is the South Indian Food We Deserve

We came in thinking we knew what South Indian food was. We left understanding that we had been eating a very small chapter of a very large book.

Avartana is not a casual dinner run — it is a full occasion, a deliberate evening, the kind of restaurant you book in advance and actually look forward to for days. The price point reflects that: meal for two sits at approximately ₹7,500. For a tasting menu of this quality, at this address, with this level of craft? Worth every bit of it.

South Delhi approved — for the special occasion, the birthday dinner, the date you actually want to impress, or the Tuesday when you decide you deserve something extraordinary for no reason at all. Because if we're going to do South Indian, we might as well do it like this. Elevated, unexpected, and completely, completely unforgettable.

The dosa got a glow-up. And we are absolutely here for it.