Ranji Smile: the chef behind an early Indian restaurant in America

One hundred and twenty-five years after Ranji Smile opened Omar Khayyam on New York’s Fifth Avenue, the chef’s story remains a striking episode in the early history of Indian food in America: celebrity, an ambitious restaurant, legal trouble and an unresolved disappearance.

The restaurant, which opened in late 1901, may have been the first in the United States devoted to Indian cuisine, according to historian Dinyar Patel’s account published by the BBC. It closed within a year, but preceded better-remembered establishments that helped Indian cooking find a lasting American audience.

Smile’s own beginnings are much less clear. Neither his real name nor much of his early life is known. His eventual disappearance is similarly unresolved: the last evidence identified in Patel’s account is a marriage annulment application filed in 1937.

From London kitchens to Fifth Avenue

Smile arrived in New York from London in the summer of 1899 to work at Sherry’s Restaurant, a luxurious Fifth Avenue establishment whose customers included members of the Astor family.

He had worked as a curry cook at London’s Cecil and Savoy hotels. An 1899 profile in Harper’s credited restaurateur Louis Sherry with spotting him in London and inviting him to bring his cooking to New York.

Indian food was not new to Britain: Sake Dean Mohamed, originally from Patna, had opened the Hindostanee Coffee House near London’s Portman Square in 1810. In New York, however, Smile was introducing his cooking to diners with much less exposure to Indian flavours.

His dishes at Sherry’s included Bombay duck — a fish associated with India’s western coast — and a creation called Lettuce Ceylon. His presentation was as conspicuous as his food. Wearing a satin coat and blue silk turban, he turned service into a performance and became a subject of newspaper and magazine coverage.

A restaurant of his own

In 1901, Smile left Sherry’s to establish a restaurant exclusively serving Indian cuisine. Financier Roland R Conklin provided backing.

Omar Khayyam opened at 325 Fifth Avenue, a block from the original Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Indian draperies and hanging lanterns decorated the premises, while contemporary coverage described Indian waiters in turbans and a group of Indian musicians.

The attention Smile had attracted as a chef did not translate into a sustainable business. The restaurant shut within a year. The New York Sun’s explanation was that diners had tired of Indian food, though that contemporary judgement does not establish why the venture failed.

The enterprise also became entangled in a federal case. According to Patel’s account, authorities alleged that Smile had illegally brought staff recruited in Bombay into the United States to work at the restaurant. Smile avoided deportation, although some members of his entourage did not.

Reinvention and an uncertain ending

As his restaurant career faltered, Smile continued to cultivate a public persona. He claimed royal connections, including that he was the son of an emir of Baluchistan — a title Patel describes as fictional — and later presented himself as the brother of another purported dignitary.

He travelled around the United States giving Indian cooking demonstrations, combining food with entertainment. He also promoted unsupported claims that Indian cooking enhanced women’s beauty.

By the 1920s, he apparently had left professional cooking behind, listing his occupation as a merchant. In 1937, a woman described in the account as his fourth or fifth American wife sought an annulment in the New York Supreme Court after he had absconded. What happened to him afterwards remains unknown.

Other restaurateurs achieved the longevity that eluded Smile. KY Kira, who came from Ceylon, opened an Indian restaurant in Harlem in 1913 that eventually became known as the Ceylon India Inn. It later moved near Times Square and remained in business until the late 1980s.

Omar Khayyam’s brief existence complicates that later restaurant’s claim to have been America’s first Indian restaurant. Smile’s place in culinary history rests on that early venture, even as much of the man behind it remains elusive.