Pendulo: A Culinary Dialogue Between India and Mexico in Mehrauli

THERE ARE RESTAURANTS that feed you, and then there are restaurants that rearrange how you think about food. Pendulo belongs firmly in the second category. It is not trying to dazzle with novelty or overwhelm with cleverness. It is doing something far more difficult: it is making a case—for flavour, for patience, for tasting menus in India, and for the idea that cultures separated by oceans have always been speaking to one another through fire.

 India and Mexico understand each other instinctively. Both are ancient, generous cuisines shaped by heat, colour, smoke and survival. Both believe food is not minimalism but meaning. That chilli is not decoration but declaration. That warmth—of people, of palate, of spirit—cannot be dimmed by history’s many interruptions. At Pendulo, that shared grammar comes alive not as fusion, but as conversation.

The setting heightens the experience. High above Mehrauli, with the Qutb Minar standing timeless and unseduced in the background, the restaurant feels suspended between eras. You eat while centuries look on. Clay meets flame, tandoor meets parrilla, corn meets pepper, and the meal begins to feel less like dinner and more like a dialogue across civilisations.

The tasting menu is the spine of that dialogue. Mostly vegetable-driven, thoughtfully restrained with meat, calibrated in portion and pace, it trusts the diner to stay present. Corn is not filler; it is philosophy. Pepper is not aggression; it is punctuation. Smoke is not theatre; it is memory. Course by course, the menu carries you forward, proving— quietly, confidently— that tasting menus can work in India when they are rooted in culture rather than ego.

Credit where it is due: the original culinary language of Pendulo was authored through a residency model, with Megha Kohli and Noah Louis Barnes shaping the foundational menu. Their collaboration set the tone—rigorous, respectful, deeply researched— establishing Pendulo not as a one-off concept, but as a living, breathing culinary platform.

That platform now evolves under the stewardship of Kuldeep Rawat, a chef I am proud to call my mentee and grateful to call a friend. Kuldeep is curious, grounded, and exacting—someone whose talent long outpaced opportunity. Watching his food finally find a stage this confident and visible is deeply satisfying.

What you taste at Pendulo today is not replication, but interpretation: ideas reworked, sharpened, and refined through daily practice.

Guiding that evolution is Sahil Baweja, the restaurant’s founder and my friend—a man who came of age in the West, lived close enough to Mexico to understand its food beyond stereotypes, and returned to India with the clarity to build something rare. What struck me immediately was this: these were not the predictable Mexican dishes that have become shorthand across India. These were ideas that had fallen into new shape and form because a visionary and a culinarian were thinking together—not for novelty, but for longevity, for business, and for belief.

The bar deserves equal applause. The mixology here does not perform; it converses. Ferments, smoke, acidity, restraint—each drink respects the food and extends the story. It understands that beverages, too, can carry geography and memory.

Pendulo is ultimately an affirmation. That restraint can be indulgent. That tasting menus can be democratic. That India does not need to borrow confidence—it already owns it. This is not a restaurant trying to escape its roots. It is a restaurant standing firmly in them, looking outward.

So go. Go with time. Go with curiosity. Go hungry—not just for food, but for meaning. Sit under the shadow of stone and sky, and let India and Mexico speak to you in a shared language of warmth, colour, and fire.

Pendulo doesn’t ask for applause.

It asks for attention.

And it rewards you richly for giving it.