ROOH: Progressive Indian on Randolph StreetTraditional or innovative, all dishes represent a series of decisions by the chef, who incorporates many familiar elements but varies the formula based on ingredient availability, whim and other factors, random or calculated. ROOH prides itself on taking recipes for traditional Indian food – including many items you might see on the standard Devon Avenue buffet – and pushing them in a way that extends boundaries and sparks our understanding of dishes we thought we knew.
Headed up by Chef Sujan Sakar (Times’ Chef of the Year in India), ROOH is aiming to serve “progressive Indian” cuisine, which means it’s a step in the evolution of the Indian cooking tradition, presenting dishes with many of the same ingredients and flavors of Indian food…but with a difference.
Here are some examples of how the cuisine at ROOH represents a fresh take on traditional Indian cooking.
Tuna Bhel Tuna Bhel is a variation on Bhel Puri, an extremely popular street food in India, usually consisting of puffed rice, vegetables, spicy tamarind sauce and many other ingredients that’s sold all over India. At ROOH, there are – somewhat surprisingly – chunks of raw tuna added, which you would never see on the street food version, but which works very well with the more traditional ingredients.
Dahi Puri Dahi Puri is another popular Indian street food that Chef Sakar reinvigorates for a fine dining environment. Puri is a kind of crisp sphere, traditionally filled with any one of a number of ingredients. At ROOH, Sakar fills his with avocado and crushed raspberry, which you would be unlikely to encounter on the streets of Delhi or Calcutta. In India, puri are known as "girl's food," and indeed I did see large swarms of young women in school uniforms crowding around puri vendors. In India, it seems almost impossible to buy one puri; they come in sets of, I think, four or so. In a fine dining environment like ROOH, of course, you get one on a plate -- and plate that is, incidentally, dark black, the better to facilitate Instagramming.
The challenge with the ROOH approach is that when we go to an Indian restaurant, we're waiting for our Indian food buttons to be pushed. There are foods -- regular buffet items, perhaps clichés but no less delicious for their commonness -- that we expect to have. ROOH thwarts those expectations, and though we have to applaud them for taking risks, it is definitely a risk to not serve items like tandoori chicken and sag paneer. The restaurant clearly announces that these traditional preparations are not what it's going after, but still, a risk.
Nontraditional food like this would likely bomb on Devon, and the restaurants location on Randolph signals that it's going for a hip and happening crowd that wants elegant presentations rather than a buffet.
ROOH
736 N. Randolph
https://www.roohchicago.com/
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