HAOMA Bangkok explores eight eras of India through Kaal Yatra
Words and Photos: Pasuta Phongam and Nakorn Jandralodika
Chef Deepanker Khosla brings Indian culinary history into conversation with Thai ingredients, accompanied by a beverage pairing that travels from Champagne to Osaka and the Douro.
Sea urchin from Sattahip, lamb from Phrae and cacao from Chanthaburi give a distinctly local geography to Kaal Yatra, the new tasting menu at HAOMA in Bangkok. Its subject is India across eight eras: the ingredients available to its early settlements, the movement of culinary ideas, and the encounters that changed what arrived at the table.
Chef Deepanker “DK” Khosla translates these references into contemporary dishes, with Thai produce running through the sequence.
At the Sukhumvit Soi 31 restaurant, recognised with One MICHELIN Star and a MICHELIN Green Star in the 2026 Thailand guide, sourcing is integral to the cooking. The restaurant works with local growers and fisherfolk alongside its own cultivation. On this menu, those relationships make the historical premise tangible: a familiar Indian preparation can carry the character of a Thai coastal ingredient or a crop grown further north.
The experience is carefully paced. Courses build gradually, allowing the story and the food to develop together. Spicing remains measured throughout our meal, with enough restraint for coconut, seafood, vegetables and citrus to retain their identities.
Sommelier and beverage director Vishvas Sidana’s pairing follows that same sensitivity, moving beyond wine to include sake, Oloroso and Port. The selection is assured and well matched to the food, giving each stage its own accompaniment without disrupting the progression.
The first passage takes the Indus Valley, dated in the menu to 3000–1300 BCE, as its starting point. Eating from the surrounding landscape becomes a prompt for three contemporary amuse-bouches. These are imaginative interpretations of the theme, rather than attempts to reproduce ancient recipes.
Beetroot Tart combines beetroot tartare with mustard oil, yuzu and yogurt jam, bringing earthy sweetness into contact with pungency and acidity.
Bombay Sandwich draws on Mumbai street food, gathering onion, tapioca, chutney and cheese with pickled beetroot jelly.
Uni Toast introduces Sattahip sea urchin in two preparations involving toast, onion jus, spice, baby shrimp, curry and mint oil. Together, the bites establish the menu’s range, moving from vegetables and pickles towards the sea.
R.H. Coutier Rosé Champagne from the Grand Cru village of Ambonnay accompanies the opening. It gives the three bites a shared point of reference before the pairing begins to move between regions and styles.
The Mauryan Empire, 322–185 BCE, provides the setting for Chicken Kebab. Organic minced chicken is paired with cured egg, kebab masala and yuzu, the citrus bringing a clear accent to the richer elements.
Alongside it comes Sébastien Riffault’s Auksinis, a Sauvignon Blanc from Sancerre in France’s Loire Valley. The move from Champagne to Riffault’s wine signals the breadth of the beverage programme early in the meal.
The menu then turns to the Delhi Sultanate, 1206–1526 CE, and its Persian culinary references. Qorma Egg takes a soft, custard-like form, accompanied by mushrooms and teardrop peas from Chiang Rai. Here, the attention shifts towards texture, with the vegetables giving definition to the egg.
Bénédicte & Stéphane Tissot’s En Barberon Chardonnay 2020, from a single vineyard in the Jura, accompanies the course.
Kaal Yatra follows the rhythm of dinner rather than a strictly chronological timeline. Its fourth era returns to the Sangam period, 300 BCE–300 CE, to consider southern India through the meeting of mountain and sea. Two seafood dishes give this passage room to develop.
Wild-Caught Fish centres on grouper with meen moilee curry. Coconut milk carries a spice mixture of clove, black and yellow mustard, dried chilli, nutmeg and fennel, while green mango introduces a sharper edge. Curry leaf and lumpfish roe complete the composition, placing aromatic warmth beside fruit acidity and salinity.
The pairing moves to Japan with Akishika Shuzo’s Junmai Daiginjo Muroka Nama Genshu from Osaka. Introducing sake at this point expands the menu’s vocabulary and reflects a beverage programme willing to look beyond familiar regional pairings.
Crab Sukha follows with Jaffna crab, coconut, red chilli and a ghee-roast preparation. Hollandaise espuma and curry-leaf emulsion add contrasting textures around the crab. Julian Haart’s Old Vines Riesling Kabinett 2020 from Germany’s Mosel accompanies it, giving the second seafood course a different direction in the glass. The two pairings help distinguish dishes connected by coconut, curry leaf and the sea.
Ingredients in motion
The fifth era considers Portuguese and French arrivals, framed by the menu across 1498–1961. The broader theme is the movement of ingredients and the ways imported crops became embedded in Indian cooking. Tomato and chilli provide the most immediate expression of that idea.
Tomato Chilli Chaat explores the fruit through a tomato-juice tart, chaat-seasoned tomato and pickled tomato, with yogurt providing a creamy counterpoint. Jérôme Bretaudeau’s macerated Pinot Gris accompanies the course. Its inclusion continues the pairing’s interest in wines that do not sit neatly within conventional colour categories.
Seafood Pulissery then brings banana shrimp from Phuket together with pulissery, mango gel, yuzu gel and Oscietra caviar. Sweet shellfish, fruit and roe create a different arrangement of the acidity and richness that recur throughout the meal.
The accompanying glass is La Bota de Oloroso from Montilla-Moriles, selected by Jesús Barquín and Eduardo Ojeda of Equipo Navazos. Made from Pedro Ximénez, this Andalusian wine introduces an oxidative style to the sequence. Its placement beside seafood is one of the pairing’s more distinctive choices, widening the conversation beyond the expected white wine.
The Rajputana passage, spanning the sixth to twentieth centuries in the menu, draws on a desert context and traditions of preservation. On the plate, the focus is a charcoal-grilled lamb loin from Phrae, served with both laal maans and safed maans curries.
Black lentils, beetroot purée, shiso, burani raita, biryani and a cracker surround the lamb.
The course moves towards a fuller table of accompaniments, offering different ways to combine meat, rice, curry and cooling raita. After the individually composed seafood dishes, this change in format gives the meal a more expansive register.
Piero Busso’s Mondino Barbaresco 2021 from Neive accompanies the lamb. The Nebbiolo provides the principal red-wine moment of the evening, arriving where charcoal, meat and the two curries give it a substantial setting.
The Anglo-Indian period, 1757–1947, introduces the first dessert. Flan made with nolen jaggery is served with mishti doi ice cream, mint oil and finger lime. The combination places caramel-like sweetness beside cultured dairy and small bursts of citrus, carrying the menu’s attention to acidity into its final stages.
Niepoort Colheita 2008 from Portugal accompanies the flan. This single-harvest tawny Port closes the nine-glass pairing, bringing an aged wine into a dessert built around jaggery and yogurt.
The eighth era, present-day India from 1947 onwards, returns the focus to Thai produce. Cacao from Chanthaburi appears as a chocolate tart, mousse, sorbet and hot chocolate, finished with edible gold. The ingredient is considered through several textures and temperatures before lime, orange and chocolate petits fours complete the meal.
Across Kaal Yatra, the strongest impression is of control: in the pacing, the measured use of spice and the choice of drinks. HAOMA’s historical references give each course context, while its ingredients keep the experience rooted in the present.
The wine programme has its own substantial recognition, including Star Wine List honours from 2023 through 2026 and Wine Spectator Awards of Excellence in 2023 and 2024. At the table, its value is more immediate: nine considered selections that work with the food and sustain interest across a long, well-composed dinner.
HAOMA Reserve: +66 092 891 8222 Location: 231/3 Sukhumvit Soi 31, Bangkok Social https://www.haoma.dk/
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