Jhol KL offers fabulous coastal Indian cuisine by celebrity chef Hari Nayak

The Star

20-05-2025

Growing up in Udupi in south India, celebrated chef Hari Nayak says a love of food ran through his veins from his childhood – a familial trait he probably shares with his grandfather, who once ran a restaurant in Udupi.
'My grandfather was a restaurateur. My father did not continue that business, but growing up I would hear a lot of stories about how my father grew up in this restaurant world and the amazing Udupi food they served,' says Hari, a humble, eloquent man.
As a young adult, he went to a hospitality school in India and worked for a spell at Bukhara, a celebrated Indian restaurant in New Delhi. Then, he moved to the United States where he learnt culinary arts at the renowned Culinary Institute of America.
'Honestly during that time, I was like 'Oh, I'm going to get out of Indian cuisine and go to the West and learn everything about Western food'. I was trying to run away from Indian food, technically.
'And I think that's because my first experience in an Indian kitchen was not the best – I was given 50kg of onions to peel!
'The old-school Indian chefs were not really teachers – they would hide the recipes, whereas in the West, they welcome you and teach you,' he says.
Hari is a celebrated chef and author who opened Jhol KL in tribute to coastal Indian cuisine.
Yet Hari's Indian roots proved strong because despite having worked with top chefs in the US like Daniel Boulud and Marcus Samuelsson, he began re-examining Indian food through a new lens. This eventually birthed his first cookbook, Modern Indian Cooking – which was considered ground-breaking during its time.
'Back then there were only a few chefs in London who were kind of into this modern cooking world. And for me, working in a French kitchen, I think it naturally kind of helped me think differently. So the book was all about how to use Indian traditional flavours with Western cooking techniques,' he says.
Now 25 years into his career, Hari has come full circle and no longer believes Indian food needs to be adapted, modernised or messed around with.
'As I've matured as a chef, I've realised Indian cooking does not need reinvention. Of course, when you present traditional food, you want to give something different, but I think that can be done without diluting the essence and the Indian-ness of the recipe,' he says.
Over the course of his career, Hari has opened a string of restaurants all over the world, including Sona in New York, which was a huge hit when it launched a few years back, in collaboration with Bollywood star Priyanka Chopra and her husband Nick Jonas. The eatery has since shuttered.
The restaurant combines elegance with a casual charm. — Jhol KL
His most recent restaurant is Jhol in Kuala Lumpur – a beautiful space that is sophisticated and yet very, very charming.
The restaurant – which opened in partnership with Clifftop Group Asia – is a representation of the original Jhol outlet, which opened in Bangkok, Thailand in 2020 and has been hugely popular since.
At Jhol KL, you can expect to feast on coastal Indian cuisine from Indian states like Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashta, Gujarat, Odisha, West Bengal and Goa.
Coastal Indian cuisine is typified by spices like mustard seeds and fenugreek; the liberal use of coconut; a focus on seafood; rice as a binding agent; and the use of ingredients such as mangoes, kokum and curry leaves.
The menu at Jhol has traditional roots but isn't entirely traditional. In fact, you will find thoughtful, calibrated touches that add uniqueness and a point of differentiation to a meal here.
At the moment, the a la carte menu hasn't rolled out yet, so Malaysian diners will only be able to sample The Culinary Journey tasting menu, priced at RM310+ per person.
The trio of snacks that prologue the meal offer texture, flavour and contrast in one fell swoop. — Photos: Jhol KL
Highlights from the menu include the trio of snacks that form the prologue of the meal, like the Calicut Pepper Crab.
Framed as crab on toast with a garlic-yoghurt infused pachadi to break through the barriers, this is a peppery, aquatic flavour bomb that forms the basis for instant addiction.
One of the signature items at Jhol is the Masala Muska Bun (add RM45+). The buns are fashioned after Bangalore's famed Iyengar Bakery's potato masala buns.
The masala muska bun is a thing of beauty that forms a successful union with the curry leaf butter provided on the side. — ABIRAMI DURAI/The Star
In Jhol's iteration, a potato bun is stuffed with a masala-decked interior, with pav bhaji butter and curry leaf butter served alongside.
The bread is a golden goddess that is meant to be pulled apart. This doughy delight is incredibly fluffy and soft as a cloud, with the masala gilding its inner core like a fiery, spirited vixen.
Of the butters on offer, the curry leaf butter is sensationally good, yielding herbaceous, oleaginous roots that have sprouted and flowered into the flavours so familiar in the Indian sub- continent, yet couched in an entirely original configuration.
Perhaps one of the most memorable offerings on the menu is BFC or Berhampur fried chicken with Jhol hot sauce.
Crunchy, crackly and insanely juicy, this is the fried chicken of your dreams. — ABIRAMI DURAI/The Star
The chicken wings here are deboned, cooked and piped in again, then coated in a spice-riddled tempura batter and double-fried and served alongside a chutney.
The result is chicken that is oh-so satisfyingly crackly and crispy to the touch, eliciting crunch with every morsel and yielding to juicy, tender meat within. It's the sort of fried chicken befitting emperors and kings.
The Surti Anda Ghotala is essentially chilli cheese toast with shaved truffle.
The dish hails from Gujarat, where it is a popular street food essential. In this variation of the dish, toast is added to the egg-and-cheese mixture and truffles are heaped atop for added opulence.
Created in tribute to a Gujarati street food staple, the chilli cheese toast with truffles cleverly fuses tradition with innovation.
The eggs are creamy and jiggly while the masala in the mixture offers spicy nuances to what would otherwise simply be eggs on toast. It's an unpretentious homage to tradition that kicks things up a notch with the evergreen allure of truffles.
The next series of dishes are served sharing-style, replicating the comforts of a traditional Indian meal. Of what's on offer, the Kundapura Ghee Roast Chicken served with a cone-shaped dosa and coconut chutney is an immediate scene-stealer.
The chicken is slow cooked with red chilli and ghee and is a spicy, masala-riddled offering. Mop up the goodness of the chicken with the dosa, which is firm yet succumbs to a yeasty interior that is instantly alluring.
End the savoury part of your meal with the Alleppey Fish Curry, served with kappa (a traditional Kerala-style tapioca dish) and matta rice (a popular Indian rice known for its health benefits).
The Alleppey fish curry features fish and green mangoes swimming in a rich, creamy gravy. — Jhol KL
The fish curry is cooked with green mango, which is what gives it a slight tanginess amidst its creamy richness.
The kappa is also very, very good - starchy, sticky and flavourful while the rice is the perfect receptacle to soak up all these diverse flavours.
Dessert takes the form of the Tender Coconut Payasam with jaggery sesame snap and mango sorbet. Here, coconut, jaggery and mango form the cornerstones of this sweet seductress, which is soothing and yet somehow euphoric all at once.
Ultimately, Hari says he hopes Jhol KL will be a landmark restaurant for refined Indian flavours that are familiar and yet take diners on a journey through brand new terrain.
'I always believe that I want to create dishes that my family would enjoy. And if I see myself eating here twice a month myself, then I feel like that's the kind of restaurant menu I want to create,' he says. Address: The Met Corporate Tower, Jalan Dutamas 2, Kompleks Kerajaan, 50480 Kuala Lumpur Open daily: noon to 2.30pm; 6pm to 10.30pm