The Chefs of KHAKI: Sujan Sarkar, Pujan Sarkar, and What Michelin Cooking Looks Like in San Ramon

Michelin stars are cited constantly in restaurant marketing and understood by very few diners who have not worked in a professional kitchen. The star does not mean the food is expensive or formal. It means anonymous inspectors, visiting multiple times, found that the kitchen operates at a standard of technique, consistency, and execution that most restaurants never reach. What that standard actually looks like on a plate at KHAKI in San Ramon is what this guide explains. The starting point is  the menu . The fuller picture requires understanding who is cooking and what they have spent careers building.

Sujan Sarkar: The Credentials in Plain Terms

Sujan Sarkar earned a Michelin star for Indienne, his Chicago restaurant, in 2023. Indienne became the first Indian restaurant in Chicago to earn that recognition, confirmed on the official Michelin Guide. He received James Beard Award nominations for Best Chef: Great Lakes in both 2024 and 2025. The James Beard Foundation is the most rigorous peer-evaluated culinary recognition in the United States. A nomination means that other chefs and industry professionals, evaluating the body of work over multiple years, placed him among the country's best.

His prior restaurants span multiple markets. Trèsind in Dubai brought modern Indian fine dining to a market where Indian cuisine was consistently undervalued at the luxury level. BAAR BAAR in New York and Los Angeles extended that work to American fine-dining audiences. EK BAR in New Delhi operated in a competitive local market where culinary knowledge is high and credibility is hard to establish. Each one was built on the same conviction: Indian cuisine, prepared with the technique and ingredient sourcing applied to French or Japanese fine dining, produces results that stand alongside any cuisine in the world.

What Michelin-Level Training Actually Changes

This is the question most diners do not know to ask. Michelin-level training is not primarily about expensive ingredients or elaborate plating. It is about consistency, precision, and the elimination of variables.

In most restaurants, the quality of a dish depends on who made it that day. In a Michelin-caliber kitchen, the dish is the same every time because training produces a shared standard every cook understands and can replicate. The spice blend is ground to the same consistency each time. The handi is sealed at the same point in the cooking process. The cooking time adjusts for the specific cut of meat rather than following a fixed timer.

For the  Champaran mutton,  sealed and slow-cooked for hours in a clay vessel, that consistency matters enormously. The margin between the dish working perfectly and working adequately is narrow. A kitchen trained at the Michelin level understands those margins. A kitchen that is not trained that way relies on luck.

The same applies to the galouti kebab, which requires a mince consistency and a cooking window with very little room for error, and to the dum biryani, where the dough-sealed vessel must be cracked at the right moment after the right cooking time to release the saffron and whole-spice aromatics intact.

Pujan Sarkar: Twenty-Two Years of a Different Authority

Pujan Sarkar's credentials come from sustained performance rather than a single recognition. He led Rooh San Francisco, consistently praised by the Michelin California guide, for nearly seven years. Michelin guide inclusion without a star means the inspectors found the kitchen excellent but not quite at the level they would stake their name on. Most restaurants never reach guide consideration at all. Rooh qualified repeatedly.

His twenty-two years of culinary experience cover the specific traditions that form KHAKI's menu backbone: the street-side preparations of Mumbai and Kolkata, the railway station kababs that fed India's traveling population for generations, the home-style slow cooking that disappears when Indian restaurants try to present themselves as upscale rather than genuinely good. His knowledge of these traditions is why the ragda pani puri and the jackfruit cutlet read as authentic rather than interpreted.

What This Actually Changes on the Plate in San Ramon

Three things change when a kitchen with this background runs the service.

Ingredient sourcing. A Michelin-trained kitchen sources differently. The specific cut of meat, the specific rice variety, the freshness of the whole spices: these decisions happen before cooking begins. KHAKI works with California producers for seasonal ingredients, applying a fine-dining sourcing standard to dishes most Indian restaurants treat as commodity cooking.

Spice handling. Most Indian restaurants use pre-blended commercial masalas for efficiency. A kitchen with Sujan Sarkar's background grinds spices specifically for each preparation because freshly ground spice affects the flavor profile in ways that are perceptible at the table. The difference is not subtle. It is the reason the same named dish at KHAKI and at a generic Indian restaurant in the Tri-Valley tastes genuinely different.

Execution consistency. The tasting menu format works because the kitchen can guarantee the sequence. Dishes arrive in the right order, at the right temperature, at the right pace. That is not a given. It is the result of kitchen discipline that Michelin training produces and that most restaurants do not have.

The Akash Kapoor Dimension

KHAKI is co-founded by Akash Kapoor, founder and CEO of Curry Up Now, one of the fastest-growing Indian restaurant groups in the United States. His operational expertise in scaling Indian food concepts across California brings a dimension neither Sujan nor Pujan brings from their fine-dining backgrounds: the logistics of running a restaurant that performs at a high level consistently, not just on good nights.

Michelin-level kitchen discipline is most valuable when combined with operational standards that ensure delivery to every guest. That operational dimension is Kapoor's contribution, and it is why the canteen format at KHAKI runs smoothly alongside the fine-dining cooking underneath it.

Why the Canteen Format and Not a Fine-Dining Restaurant

Sujan Sarkar has restaurants in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and Dubai. Pujan built his reputation in San Francisco. The choice to open KHAKI as a neighborhood canteen in San Ramon rather than a formal fine-dining destination in a major city is a deliberate strategic decision worth explaining.

The Tri-Valley has one of the largest and most food-literate Indian-American communities in the Bay Area. This is a community that knows what good Indian food is, that has family connections to specific regional cooking traditions, and that has the culinary knowledge to recognize a kitchen operating above the standard the market has given them. It is a market that has been served almost entirely by mid-range and casual Indian restaurants.

The canteen format is the right format for a community that wants to eat seriously prepared Indian food regularly rather than only on special occasions. It removes the formality that fine dining can create between a diner and food they grew up with. The Michelin-level cooking underneath the canteen format is the part that makes the experience unlike anything else currently available in the Tri-Valley.

Reserve Your Table

The food at KHAKI is the result of a specific culinary lineage applied deliberately to a format built for everyday eating. That combination does not exist anywhere else in San Ramon or the Tri-Valley.

Reserve a table  or explore  what to order  before your first visit. For group and private event bookings, contact the team at manager@wearekhaki.com or (925) 359-6794.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Sujan Sarkar have a Michelin star? 

Yes. Sujan Sarkar earned a Michelin star for Indienne in Chicago in 2023, making it the first Michelin-starred Indian restaurant in Chicago, confirmed on the official Michelin Guide.

What is Sujan Sarkar's restaurant background?

 He founded Indienne (Chicago, Michelin star 2023), Trèsind (Dubai), BAAR BAAR (New York and Los Angeles), and EK BAR (New Delhi). He received James Beard Award nominations for Best Chef: Great Lakes in 2024 and 2025.

Who is Pujan Sarkar and what did he do before KHAKI?

 Pujan Sarkar is Sujan's brother and co-chef at KHAKI. He led Rooh San Francisco, recognized by the Michelin California guide, for nearly seven years. He brings over twenty-two years of culinary experience focused on regional Indian comfort food traditions.

What does Michelin training change about the food at KHAKI?

 Sourcing standards, freshly ground spice blends instead of commercial masalas, and execution consistency that produces the same quality dish every service rather than depending on conditions on any given day.

Is KHAKI fine dining?

 KHAKI is a modern Indian bar and canteen: accessible in format and atmosphere, with a kitchen operating at a fine-dining technical standard. The combination is deliberate.