Instagram story viewer> @kamlnegi> Posts

kamlnegi

@kamlnegi

3.1K

followers

545

following

Executive chef Head of Research @restaurantnaar
Exploring the fusion of tradition and innovation

POSTS STORIES REELS TAGGED

Download All

India’s No. 1 Restaurant 🤍🥹

Honestly, it still feels unreal.

A few months ago, we were a small team trying to figure out our pincode, our location, and whether anyone would make the trek to find us. Today, the country knows exactly where we are.

Thank you to the @cntravellerindia India jury for this recognition. And thank you to every guest, old and new, who trusted us enough to make the journey up to Kasauli. None of this happens without you.

A big thank you to @diviathani @sa1i1 @diyak and the entire team @districtupdates for making it a night to remember. You created the most amazing room, bringing people from across India’s F&B world together to celebrate each other with the loudest cheers.

And a special thank you to everyone at @theamayalife , to @deepak_amaya and the entire team. Your immense support is the reason we are here at all. We wouldn’t have begun without you.

We promise not to take any of it for granted. Thank you for being part of our journey.

Today, we celebrate, and we celebrate with you.

Panda hugs 🐼 ✌️ taken in NAAR by @kamlnegi

2k

66

4 days ago

Yes, We have a seabuckthorn obsession !

Ladakh has been home and Inspiration to us for years now, every trip to Leh ends the same way back at the airport with excess baggage, because we simply cannot leave without the amazing wild produce to get back to NAAR

Back in 2015, Chef Prateek found seabuckthorn, locally also known as Shipshululu growing wild, tart and thorny and completely underrated. Almost nobody was talking about it then. A decade later, it’s everywhere but we haven’t stopped chasing it back to where we first found it

This trip, we timed it just right landed in Leh during the harvest season, our favourite wonder berry ready and waiting

In the NAAR menu, it’s a pre-dessert paired with timur leaves and this course is an ode to two of our most-loved ingredients on the menu

Ten years in, and it still feels like a rediscovery every single time! by @kamlnegi

402

7

a month ago

Wild Himalayan Cumin locally called Konyot in Ladakh

We found it growing wild in a kitchen garden tucked into the landscape, at the edge of a barley field being brought in for the season. This was Dechen’s family farm, where wild cumin grows alongside wild garlic

Both go into the tempering of her family’s thukpa recipe

But cumin here does more than season a meal, Crushed and warmed into hot oil, then wrapped over aching joints, it’s a folk remedy carried down through the mountains medicine and spice held in the same seed

Dechen didn’t just let us into her garden. She let us into her memory of it the stories that come attached to a spice she’s probably known her whole life

The Wild cumin itself has a citrus note that sets it apart and we got lucky to handpick cumin to bring back to the restaurant

This is what foraging trips are really about not just what grows wild, but who you meet along the way and the stories they share with us

Thank You Dechen @molachen111 taken in Leh Ladakh by @kamlnegi

606

10

a month ago

Onam at NAAR on a rainy day, in a staff meal led by Shree

There was no grand plan just a small team, a rainy afternoon, and a table full of flavours that don’t usually find their way to these hills

Also, where one festival’s flavours travel far from home and find new people to feed

Thank you, Shree, for bringing Onam festivities and flavours to the mountains 🌧

For some of our local team members, this was the first taste of Onam the tang, the coconut and all the deliciousness

Chef Kamlesh on the pass by @kamlnegi

1k

21

a month ago

We’ve started this year documenting the wild mushrooms in the mountains around NAAR : gucchi, most known among them, but far from the only one

Today, Premji showed us another: what we believe is a termite mushroom, growing near pine cover in damp soil. I say “believe” because this is knowledge passed down, not written down

What stayed with me wasn’t the mushroom. It was listening to Premji, how he knows where to look, what the soil tells him, what his father probably taught him the same way. That knowledge doesn’t live in books. It lives in people, and it’s fading with every generation that moves away from these hills

We opened NAAR to cook food that speaks of these mountains. Days like this remind me our job is bigger than the plate.

If we’ve got something wrong here, we want to know!

This is a living document, built with the people who actually hold the knowledge

Continuing the mushroom documentation, one wild find at a time. taken in NAAR by @kamlnegi

484

13

2 months ago

The mountains grow dozens of wild mushrooms and the knowledge of what’s food and what isn’t has always lived in a few people.

Recently we found Putu as far as we know, a wild monsoon earthstar fungus. All overgrown by the time we spotted them, past the point we’d trust eating. So we didn’t.

We photographed them instead, noted where and when, and added them to a record we’re slowly building what grows in these hills, season by season.

That’s the real thrill of foraging. Not always the plate. Sometimes just the find.

Foragers. Grandmothers. Old shepherds. Passed on by hand, rarely written down. That knowledge is thinning out.

So we’ve started paying closer attention. Sometimes the mushrooms find us before we find them.

We’re sharing what we know . Got something to correct or add? Tell us!

Should this become a series — documenting every wild mushroom we come across, season after season? Let us know 👇 by @kamlnegi

593

17

2 months ago

Badhal or Monkey Fruit (belongs to the same plant family as the jackfruit) but never made it to the big cities because of its highly perishable nature
A Wild grown fruit in the sub himalayan belt
One of those fruits slowly disappearing with time and we have been lucky to find it still thriving in a nearby village and for it we go the extra miles!

Bottled up, its our Badhal ka achar- a taste of mountain summers held onto a while longer taken in NAAR by @kamlnegi

461

8

2 months ago

Story time with Chef Kamlesh

Back home in Uttarakhand, there’s a sabji made from baby bamboo called baskil (a monsoon delicacy)

The bamboo is boiled in wood ash and it creates a natural alkaline solution, drawing out the bitterness and neutralising the shoot’s harsher compounds

Then the bamboo is fried in mustard oil with jakhya, Garhwal’s most beloved tempering spice, sharp and nutty.

At NAAR, we took that memory and into a pickle, sharp, funky, alive on the tongue. A dish that begins in a home kitchen in the hills and ends up, in the Jar! taken in NAAR by @kamlnegi

637

12

2 months ago

Monsoon moods in the Mountains 🌧️🏔️

A quick trip into the nearby village for some wild mountain black Jamun picking, conversations along the way, and watching Jeetu effortlessly climb one of the trickiest tree by @kamlnegi

497

9

3 months ago

Paja Tree Sap or the Wild Himalayan Cherry Sap

While the cherries themselves are still months away, until then we began collecting this resin not with a dish in mind, but with curiosity, to understand texture, flavor and where it might belong in the kitchen

Perhaps it becomes something. Perhaps it doesnt

That’s a story our R&D will tell in time. For now, we simply learning from the mountains- one tree, one season, one ingredient at a time

And when the season turns, the paja berries will once again become the syrup that finds its way into our cocktails

@theamayalife by @kamlnegi

514

13

3 months ago

A kitchen can be an archive of its surroundings, but also a place where the surroundings are constantly reimagined.

NAAR, in the Himalayan foothills, is celebrated as one of Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants. In this session, Chefs Prateek and Kamlesh offer a glimpse into how the restaurant's Himalayan pantry is alive, responding to shifting seasons and drawing new culinary expressions from local ingredients.

Join this session at Desi Cultures 2026 - an online fermentation festival-conference between 18 and 26 July 2026.

Grab passes by via link in bio. by @kamlnegi

172

5

3 months ago

No ladders here!

Up in seconds and down like its nothing, Suraj helped Chef Kamlesh and Chef Prateek to harvest Trembal, also called Timla in parts of Uttarakhand

It is a variety of Wild Himalayan Fig

Unripe, it becomes Trembal ka sabji, a speciality that marks the season arrival of the fig

Ripe, its soft, faintly sweet and can be eaten straight of the tree

The pulp finds its way into chutneys, Jams or pickles

Back in the days even the leaves of this tree were made into bowls and plates

This is what seasonal, sustainable food has always looked like in the mountains. Long before it needed a name!

@theamayalife by @kamlnegi

807

18

3 months ago