Pujan .
Sarkar
AN INTRODUCTION
Pujan Sarkar is the chef of TIYA — a modern New Indian restaurant in San Francisco's Marina District, opened in 2024 with his elder brother and mentor, Sujan. He came to TIYA after seven years building the kitchen at Rooh, where he came to know San Francisco the way only a chef who stays in one city does. He was born in Bengal, trained at the Culinary Academy of India, and has cooked his way through seven cities and two continents before arriving at the work he has been moving toward all along.
Mumbai · Delhi · Bangalore · Seattle · LA · Chicago · San Francisco
THE LONG WAY HERE
A green parrot, and a
a long way home.
He named the restaurant after a bird. Tiya — the green parrot of his Bengali childhood. "I remember going on picnics as a child," he says, "and we used to see these small parrots in the mango tree."
From those mango trees to TIYA's Marina kitchen took two decades, two continents, and seven cities. He trained at the Culinary Academy of India, cooked through Mumbai, Delhi, and Bangalore, then crossed to America — Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago — before settling in San Francisco in 2017 to take over the kitchen at Rooh. He stayed for seven years. In a profession that celebrates motion, that was its own quiet statement.
Along the way he competed on Food Network's Chopped (2018), was named Sous Chef of the Year at the Bay Area Saucy Awards, and built deep relationships with the growers he now cooks from — Hawk Creek Farm in Glen Park, where he volunteers, and Three Springs in Bodega Bay. Off the line, he cycles around Golden Gate Park with his daughter.
IN HIS WORDS
We are not adding California to Indian food. We are letting Indian cooking, which has always been a cuisine of place, do what it has always done. Here, the place is California.
CHEF PUJAN SARKAR
A modern New Indian restaurant in San Francisco's Marina District — Pujan's current home in the kitchen, and the first joint venture between him and his brother Sujan.
The room is intimate. The menu lives in two registers — a chef's tasting and an à la carte — and changes with what the Bay's farms are sending. The cocktail program treats San Francisco itself as the recipe book.
TIYA. The first thing
the brothers built
together.
A Note to New Partners
Let's build something.
together
Pujan is selectively open to new ventures, collaborations, and joint projects — concepts he can help build, kitchens he can help shape, and partners he can grow alongside. If you have something on your mind, tell him about it below.
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Chef. San Francisco, by way of Bengal. Cooking the New Indian — slowly, seasonally, from California.