BADMAASH Venice: Abbot Kinney Finally Has an Indian Restaurant Worth the Wait

Brothers Nakul and Arjun Mahendro have been making their case for modern Indian food in Los Angeles since 2013. The concept was always clear: bold subcontinental flavor, confident LA energy, and none of the apologetic softening that dilutes Indian food into something tourists feel comfortable ordering. Thirteen years later, they’ve planted their third flag on Abbot Kinney — and the Venice location feels like the version they’ve been building toward all along.

Opened in late March at 1616 Abbot Kinney Blvd, BADMAASH Venice is the first location in the brand’s history with outdoor patio seating, the first with a full cocktail program, and easily the most ambitious room they’ve built yet. Design firm Preen Inc. handled the interior: candlelit stone tables, a long bar that fills up within the first hour of service, and a cave-like back room engineered to echo the atmospheric weight of Indian temple architecture. It sounds dramatic on paper. It earns the description in person.

“BADMAASH has always understood that Indian food doesn’t need softening for American audiences — it needs a room that matches its confidence. The Venice location finally has that room.”

The Food

The menu leads with chicken tikka poutine, which has been a BADMAASH signature since the beginning and still earns every piece of its reputation. Crispy fries drenched in tikka masala gravy, topped with paneer, finished with a stripe of green chutney. Don’t skip it because you’ve heard about it. Order it and understand why it travels. The Venice location adds steak frites with Indian spice in the marinade — warming masala notes that work with the char without overwhelming it, the kind of detail that signals a kitchen thinking carefully about what it’s doing.

The lamb dishes are where the new menu earns its ambition. The laal maas-style chops bring the heat and ferric depth of a Rajasthani stew to a restaurant-ready plate. The lamb neck korma goes in the opposite direction: slow-braised, deeply aromatic, the kind of dish that takes hours of cooking to look this effortless. For a starter that defies easy categorization, the whipped ricotta toast loaded with tamarind, kumquat, and blood-orange jam doesn’t sound Indian and doesn’t need to. It just needs to be ordered.

The Drinks

Beverage director Steve LaFountain’s cocktail program is the most consequential new element at the Venice location. Previous BADMAASH outposts ran BYOB or beer-and-wine only; here, the full bar finally matches the kitchen. The Badmaash dirty martini is built for people who mean it: salty, savory, not trying to make friends. The mezcal margarita gets Indian chili salts along the rim. The bourbon cocktail sweetened with date jam is the one you order twice without fully planning to. The natural wine list is short and deliberate — every bottle there for a reason, none of them safe choices.

Why Venice Needed This

The stretch of Abbot Kinney between Rose Ave and the traffic circle is one of the most competitive restaurant rows in the city. There are already plenty of places worth eating. What has been missing is a serious Indian restaurant — not a biryani window or a fusion concept with subcontinental window dressing, but a real sit-down place with a full kitchen, a real bar, and a room designed to be inhabited for a few hours. BADMAASH fills that gap with an authority that makes it feel like it’s been there for years.

The semi-open kitchen is part of the experience. You can watch the line move from the bar, always a reassuring sign in a kitchen this busy. The back room fills up first on weekends — ask for it when you book. Once the candlelit stone tables are full and the kitchen gets loud, that temple comparison stops feeling like marketing copy and starts feeling like an accurate description of where you are. It’s the best Indian restaurant on the Westside, and it just opened.