Southern Indian Restaurant Semma Opens In The West Village

The menu at Semma, the brand new Southern Indian restaurant from the team behind Adda and Dhamaka, is loaded with ingredients that most of us wouldn't immediately associate with Indian cuisine—this is thanks to Roni Mazumdar, chef Chintan Pandya, and, crucially, chef Vijay Kumar from Tamil Nadu.

There are snails here, for example, in one of the restaurant's best dishes, a starter called Nathai Pirattal. These mollusks are fantastic, just unbelievably tender and lively with ginger and tamarind, and packed stem to stern into a banana-leaf boat riding over a sea of shells. Spoon out a few of these beauties onto a torn-off slab from the accompanying parotta, a layered flatbread, and you have one of the best bites of food being served anywhere in town.

Even Mazumdar, when he and Pandya first started talking to Kumar about Semma four months ago, was surprised by the snails. "The purpose here at Semma," Mazumdar told Gothamist last week, "is to share the story of farmer boy--literally Kumar's family, they are farmers--and even though the majority of India is rural, people like me from larger cities don't really get a chance to hear this perspective. So when Kumar started talking about how as a child he was eating snails he used to pick with his grandmother in their family's rice paddies... I grew up in a big city and it's like, really? I thought snails were like a French thing. In India we're eating snails? That's a unique perspective. It's the truth of who we really are."

There's an unexpected venison dish at Semma as well, Chettinad Maan Kari, because Kumar used to hunt deer with his grandfather. The chunks of meat here are soft and funky and swimming in a stew that's sweet with star anise, earthy with black stone flower, and fiery with dried chilis. Another of Kumar's hunting memories given life here is the Kaadai Porichathu, a whole quail fried to a crackling crisp, and a family friend from Goa used to make Kumar an oxtail dish that he recreates at Semma. It's meaty, sticky, redolent with cardamom, cinnamon, cumin, and cilantro, and it's delicious.

This is good place to say that, in addition to that excellent Parotta that comes with the snails, Semma's other bread, Kal Dosa, a local specialty of Tamil Nadu made from rice and lentils, is equally excellent and should be on your table to sop up the curries and masalas in all of the larger, more entree-like dishes. Note that you will get Kal Dosa without asking when you order my other favorite thing here, the Kudal Varuval, a pile of goat intestines infused with garam masala. Mazumdar suggested we fold our offal into the crepe "like a taco" and it was sound advice.

Semma literally means "to reach for excellence," but as Pandya pointed out, "it's a slang word, like how we say 'dope' or 'rad' here. it's that kind of a word. If you ask a college kid like, 'hey man how's that new album that just came out,' they be like 'semma.'"

The lamb dish, Attu Kari Sukka, stars a pile of meat, messy with a thick, chunky concoction of black cardamom and tellicherry peppers. Eat these with your hands, obviously, and the same goes for Eral Thokku, four fat tiger prawns laden with a complex fenugreek curry. The potato-stuffed Gunpowder Dosa is another handheld delight, and if you haven't dipped your way through all of your accompanying crock of sambar, feel free to pick it up and chug it down before the server grabs your plate.

The Mulaikattiya Thaniyam is a cute-looking snack of sprouted mung beans and smoked chili. The Dindigul Biryani is studded with goat and tastes as great as you'd expect from these guys (as he placed it on the table, Pandya said: "you've had the biryani at Adda, you've had it at Dhamaka, but you've never had a biryani like this"). And the two seafood entrees, the Meen Pollichathu, or black cod, and the Valiya Chemmeen Moilee, or lobster tail, are both covered in a spectacular mustard sauce.

It's also worth noting that, as at Adda and Dhamaka, most everything here at Semma has some fire to it, and many of these dishes will have you actively seeking relief, either immediately via coconut and/or ponni rice (the latter of which was "invented" in Tamil Nadu), or at feast's end with dessert, both of which are terrific, but especially the Chakka Pradhaman, which is basically jackfruit cake topped with jackfruit ice cream. Beer, wine, cocktails, and non-alcoholic refreshers are also available to cool the heat.

There's a small but comfortable (non-heated) curbside setup, and the interior of Semma has been almost redone from its Rahi days of, like, a month ago, with banquets along the walls, lots of raw wood, and a ceiling covered in the sort of straw mats one sees in homes all over Southern India.

"We're not chasing the West with our food," said Mazumdar about Semma specifically and the Unapologetic Foods group in general. "That's been a very distinct decision for us. We want to share with utmost integrity what our cuisine is really like, what we are actually eating in our homes. You can't really sum up our entire cuisine in one restaurant so what we are doing is creating one restaurant after another that each tells a different narrative, a different story."

Pandya chimes in: "Indian food is very different from region to region and place to place. We always wanted to do different kinds of Indian food, we never wanted to do cookie-cutter concepts. And we need to empower people. We need to get the right talent. If you asked us five months ago, are you going to be doing a Southern Indian restaurant? The answer would be no. But it's because we met Vijay Kumar four months ago that we have Semma."

Semma is located at 60 Greenwich Avenue, between West 11th and Perry Streets, and is currently open Tuesday through Sunday from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. (212-373-8900; semma.nyc)