A Top Chef alum is turning her Tamil and South Indian pop-up into a standalone location this fall: Rasika Venkatesa is opening Mythily on Wednesday, September 30, in Williamsburg at 129 Havemeyer Street, between South First and Grand Streets. Her menu
explores the Tamil Nadu state in the restaurant named after her grandmother. She’s opening the 1,000-square-foot, nearly 40-seat space with her business partners, Varun Kandadi and Nicolas Chavotier.
Growing up in her Tamil Brahmin household in Chennai, Venkatesa said her grandmother was “a huge inspiration in my cooking career.” After launching the pop-up in 2024, six months later, Venkatesa landed a four-month residency at the now-closed pop-up space Fulgrances in Greenpoint. She built momentum when she was named one of Time Out New York‘s Best Young Chefs of 2025.
She’d been prepping for her rise for a long time. Before competing in the 21st season of Top Chef in 2024, she worked at San Francisco Moroccan restaurant, Mourad, which is now closed. And before that, she was a commis at the French Laundry in Yountville, California. Venkatesa realized through stints cooking elsewhere that she wanted to cook her own food. Mythily represents, she says, “what Indian cuisine means to me as a South Indian, as a Tamil girl, as an immigrant, as someone who’s queer in a community that predominantly hasn’t been super queer supportive before.”
In a menu comprised of sections like snacks, small, and big, she’s excited about the scallop crudo starter, served with Concord grapes and puli inji, a pickled tamarind-ginger-green chile condiment, and finished with a granita made of jaggery, ginger, and warming spices.
Vegetables are also central to the menu. The Caraflex cabbage entree is slow-roasted with cumin, coriander, and turmeric, and then peeled and rebuilt with layers of a sorrel-coconut chutney. It’s served on top of green lentils and mushrooms, both roasted and pureed. For other main courses, ranging from $30 to $50, there’s a chicken ballotine with onions and stir-fried lentils; tilefish with romanesco and a black currant kosho (which can be veganized with kabocha squash), and short ribs with plums, maitake mushrooms, and bone marrow kozhumbu (a tamarind curry).
For dessert, she’s bringing back the rasmalai-tres leches sweet she served during the Fulgrances residency. It’s a take on the Bengali sweet, which gets turned into a sponge cake soaked in saffron-cardamom milk and topped with whipped white chocolate, toasted pistachios, almonds, and orange zest. There’s also a filter coffee soft serve with a peanut and jaggery brittle.
The drinks menu emphasizes nonalcoholic and low-ABV options, making use of cordials and spice-infused shochus. The Kho Kho, a drink with hibiscus-infused shochu and a rosebud syrup, stems from a childhood game she played at school. The nonalcoholic Power Cut, a spiced black tea with fresh ginger juice and jaggery, invokes power blackouts in India during summer to save electricity. “It’s like a slap in your face, but in a good way; you have a jolt,” she says.
There are also beers from Brooklyn breweries and global wines.
The restaurant near the jam-packed restaurant block of Grand Street is awash in n deep reds, dark greens, and neutrals, and a mix of textures like wood, limewash, brass, Moroccan clay, and quartzite across the 33-seat dining room and nine-seat bar. Venkatesa and Kandadi designed the space with Studio Purisic. She wanted to conjure the color palettes of Kanchipuram saris. A family friend, Aishwarya Ramanchandran, created an art piece depicting a grandmother feeding her granddaughter.
Mythily will be open from Wednesday through Saturday, 5 to 10 p.m., and Sunday from 4 to 9 p.m.; book reservations on SevenRooms.
