Over the past two decades, Tandoor Master Dhandu Ram has contributed to New York’s Indian restaurant scene, introducing the culinary traditions of northwestern India as well as adding his own interpretations along the way.

In 2011, he collaborated with Chef Hemant Mathur to open the highly touted 55-seat Tulsi in midtown Manhattan, which was awarded a coveted Michelin star rating for 2012. The two tandoor masters first met when they were both aspiring chefs-in-training at New Delhi’s celebrated Bukhara Restaurant.

Ram quickly became well-known for his exceptional tandoor specialties – such as tantalizing kababs, irresistible breads, sublime dal, savory tandoori aloo (potato) and succulent tandoori leg of lamb – when he opened Bukhara Grill in 1999 as the executive chef. His northern Indian cooking has been described as having “…the sort of precise, resonant, yet subtle spicing that is all too rare in Indian restaurants,” by Eric Asimov of The New York Times.

He was most recently the chef at Yuva, which was rated by ZAGAT Survey as one of the “Top NYC Indian” restaurants for 2010 and 2011. Prior to that, he was the chef at Khyber Grill.

Originally from a small village in Rajasthan, Ram moved to New Delhi in 1980 to train in the highly respected kitchens of the Maurya Sheraton Hotel under the direction of one of India’s master chefs, Madan Lal Jaswal. Ram tirelessly worked his way through every station, eventually mastering the tandoor and overseeing the kitchen of the hotel’s haute signature restaurant, Bukhara, a regular gathering place for heads-of-state, celebrities and business leaders from around the world.

He moved to Chicago in 1992, bringing his tandoor specialties to the city’s then top-rated Indian restaurant, Moti Mahal. After much acclaim, he moved to Cleveland and opened Saffron Page before heading to New York to work at Baluchi’s and Diwan Grill.