Ranjan Dey

Ranjan Dey is the founder and chef-owner of New Delhi Restaurant, San Francisco's oldest Indian restaurant, which has operated from the same Union Square location since 1988. He began his culinary career at 14 in Calcutta, trained across India and Hong Kong, and built one of the most enduring and celebrated Indian restaurant legacies in the United States. In 2020, New Delhi Restaurant became the first Indian and South Asian-owned business to be listed on the San Francisco Registry of Legacy Businesses.

New Delhi Restaurant is the oldest Indian restaurant in San Francisco, founded by Ranjan Dey in 1988 and opened by Mayor Art Agnos. It operates from a 100-year-old former hotel ballroom in Union Square and serves cuisine drawn from royal Indian menus dating back 300 to 400 years. The New York Times has named it one of the best Indian restaurants in the United States. In 2025 it was selected as one of only 50 restaurants nationwide to receive the Backing Historic Small Restaurants grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation and American Express.

Dey started as a vegetable cutter at Calcutta's Park Hotel at age 14 while simultaneously pursuing his formal culinary education at the Institute of Catering Technology, Hotel Management and Applied Nutrition. He worked his way through the Grand and Great Eastern Hotels in Calcutta, then the Akbar and Janpath Hotels in New Delhi, then the Maurya Sheraton before moving to Hong Kong, where he opened three restaurant concepts between 1984 and 1987. He brought the concept to San Francisco in 1988, where it has remained ever since.

New World Spices is Ranjan Dey's line of six hand-blended gourmet Indian spice blends, launched in 1990 and available nationwide. Each blend was inspired by the favorite dishes of royal families from six different regions of India and created in the kitchen of New Delhi Restaurant. The line grew directly from guests asking Dey to recreate the flavors of his dishes in their own homes.

Dey's cuisine is rooted in the royal Indian culinary tradition, drawing on recipes from the courts of ancient India spanning multiple regions and dynasties. His cooking uses fresh, locally sourced ingredients to bring centuries-old techniques and flavor profiles into a contemporary dining context. Regional variety is central to his approach — his menus move across the subcontinent, reflecting the extraordinary diversity of Indian cuisine beyond what most Americans encounter.

Dey is the star of the documentary series My India With Ranjan Dey, a cultural and culinary travel series exploring the food, history, traditions, and mythology of India. He also has a forthcoming book of essays and recipes titled Freaking Deylicious, which will be adapted into a Netflix series. He has built a social media following of nearly 150,000 on Instagram, where he shares daily videos about Indian cuisine and culture.

New Delhi Restaurant has attracted an extraordinary range of guests over its 37-year history, including Deepak Chopra, Anthony Hopkins, Julia Child, President Bill Clinton, and numerous Indian film stars, spiritual leaders, and Silicon Valley figures. Julia Child, Paul Prudhomme, Graham Kerr, and Martin Yan are among the culinary luminaries who have visited the restaurant.

Dey brings to Rotation Napa something no other chef on the roster can — nearly four decades of mastery in royal Indian cuisine, built at one of the most historically significant immigrant-owned restaurants in American food history. His residency introduces Napa Valley diners to the depth, complexity, and regional range of Indian cooking at a level that goes far beyond what the valley's dining scene has previously offered, prepared by a chef whose commitment to the tradition spans an entire lifetime.

Ranjan Dey holds a chef residency at Rotation Napa in October 2026. Rotation is located at Oxbow Public Market in downtown Napa, California. Rotation Napa is Napa Valley's only monthly rotating chef residency, bringing nationally recognized culinary talent to an intimate open-hearth dining room for one month at a time. Reservations are available through the Rotation Napa website.