Ranji Smile’s Short-Lived Restaurant Marks an Early Chapter in America’s Indian Dining

Chef Ranji Smile opened Omar Khayyam on New York’s Fifth Avenue in late 1901, establishing what historian Dinyar Patel describes in a BBC article as almost certainly the first Indian restaurant in the United States. Smile had arrived from London in 1899 to cook at Sherry’s, where his food and theatrical service attracted attention from diners and the press.

Backed by financier Roland R Conklin, Smile launched his own restaurant with Indian decorations, waiters and musicians, but it closed within a year. He also faced a federal case alleging that he had illegally brought staff into the country. Smile avoided deportation, adopted fabricated royal identities and continued cooking demonstrations before apparently leaving the profession by the 1920s.

Smile’s story complicates the claim of another pioneering establishment, the Ceylon India Inn, to have been America’s first Indian restaurant. Opened by KY Kira in 1913, that business lasted until the late 1980s. Patel’s account places both ventures within growing American interest in Indian food and culture.