Grandmother Knows Best: At Mythily, a ‘Top Chef’ Alum Brings Chennai to Havemeyer Street

By Hartley Fenwicke, Restaurant Critic

The restaurant business has a lot of ways to raise money. You can find a hospitality group, or a hedge-fund client with a weakness for natural wine, or a celebrity who wants his name on a door. Or you can name the place after your grandmother and ask the internet for help.

Mythily, which opened on September 30 at 129 Havemeyer Street in Williamsburg, did it the last way. Its chef, Rasika Venkatesa, grew up in Chennai and learned to cook beside her grandmother, Mythily Ramachandran. In four weeks the restaurant has collected the sort of notices most new places wait a year for. Brooklyn Magazine’s Scott Lynch called it “easily one of my favorite new spots of the year.” The question for the column is whether the record backs up the romance. Mostly, it does.

The Backers

There aren’t any, in the usual sense. Venkatesa runs Mythily with two co-founders, Varun Kandadi and Nicolas Chavotier. According to New York City Wave, the team chose not to take outside investors. Instead it ran a Kickstarter campaign, launched June 2, to pay for the last stretch before opening: signage, plates, opening inventory, staff training and the soft-opening dinners. In a season of restaurants built by groups with decks and funds, it is a small rebellion, and a reminder that the money behind a room shapes the room.

The chef’s own résumé reads like a well-planned tasting menu. Eater’s Nadia Chaudhury reports that Venkatesa was a commis at the French Laundry and later worked at Mourad, Mourad Lahlou’s San Francisco restaurant, which has since closed. New York City Wave says she became chef de cuisine there at 23. She competed on Season 21 of Top Chef in 2024. She ran pop-ups, then a four-month residency in Greenpoint, and Eater says Time Out New York named her one of its Best Young Chefs of 2025. The residency space is spelled Fulgurances in Brooklyn Magazine and Fulgrances in Eater. We print both and lean, as a matter of French, toward the first.

The Room

The room, by Eater’s account, is about 1,000 square feet. Venkatesa and Kandadi designed it with Studio Purisic, in deep reds, dark greens and neutrals, with wood, limewash, brass, Moroccan clay and quartzite. The idea, Eater says, was the palette of Kanchipuram saris. Brooklyn Magazine notes the red exterior you can’t miss and says the only artwork is a large portrait of the young Venkatesa being fed by her grandmother. Eater says the piece is by a family friend, Aishwarya Ramanchandran. The Infatuation’s Molly Fitzpatrick calls the place “wine bar-ish,” with “plenty of leafy greenery,” and “just right for a relaxed date.”

As for how many people fit in it, the record disagrees. Eater says “nearly 40” seats in one place and a 33-seat dining room plus a nine-seat bar in another, which comes to 42. Brooklyn Magazine says “about 45.” Either way it is small. New York City Wave reports that a separate space, the Terracotta Room, takes prix-fixe group dinners of ten or more.

The Menu, and What It Costs

The restaurant calls its food “progressive South Indian,” rooted in Tamil Nadu and remade with seasonal New York produce. New York City Wave reports that the fall menu was still being finalized, so expect changes. The restaurant’s site lists no prices we could read. The figures below come from Brooklyn Magazine’s October 5 visit and from Eater, and they may have moved since.

From Brooklyn Magazine: eeral fry, a chicken-liver mousse with figs and nei appam, $22. Scallop crudo with granita, $28. The green circle kozhi ballotine, $38. Benne dosa, $18. Caraflex and muttaikose cabbage, $30. Kathirikkai adaippu curry, $24. Ras malai tres leches, $16. Cocktails are $17, wine by the glass is about the same, and beers run around $10. Eater puts the main courses at $30 to $50. It lists tilefish with romanesco and a black currant kosho, and short ribs with plums, maitake and bone-marrow kozhumbu, plus a filter-coffee soft serve with peanut-jaggery brittle. Lynch mentions lamb sukka dumplings he planned to order next time.

Even the granita has two versions. Brooklyn Magazine describes it as made from cardamom-infused panakam, the traditional South Indian drink. Eater, previewing the dish before opening, describes a granita of jaggery, ginger and warming spices, served with Concord grapes and puli inji. Panakam is traditionally made with jaggery and ginger, so the accounts may be describing the same ice from two angles. We print both.

The drinks list, per Eater, leans toward low-alcohol and nonalcoholic options. They include the Kho Kho, with hibiscus-infused shochu and rosebud syrup, and the Power Cut, a spiced black tea with ginger and jaggery, which the chef told Eater is “like a slap in your face, but in a good way.”

The Consensus

Warm, and close to unanimous. Lynch called the scallop crudo “almost a little much,” but said Venkatesa “pulls it off.” He called the ballotine “the showstopper” and “phenomenal,” and the tres leches “a dessert for the ages, absolutely one of the best sweet treats you can get anywhere in Brooklyn right now.” Fitzpatrick at the Infatuation wrote that the menu takes “delightfully unexpected turns,” that the balance between old and new is “tricky” but “the kitchen pulls it off—especially with the smaller plates.” The Infatuation has listed Mythily as unrated for now, its category for places it wants to revisit before scoring. It is the only hedge in the file.

Our Judgment

Here is the column’s view of that record. Mythily looks like the rare opening where the story and the cooking point in the same direction. The two critics who have eaten there agree on the same dishes: the scallop, the dosa, the tres leches. Their caveats point the same way too. The smaller plates may be stronger than the mains, and the kitchen likes a lot of things on a plate. For a four-week-old restaurant, that is a very good file.

The prices are fair for Williamsburg and for the ambition. A dinner of three small plates, a main, a dessert and a cocktail adds up, on published prices, to what a single entrée costs at some Manhattan places that have far less to say. The self-funding matters too. Nobody is pushing this kitchen to open a second location before it has finished the first menu. We would like to see the fall menu settle and the prices posted, and we would like to know how many chairs there really are.

The Particulars

Verdict: Book it. A confident, personal debut, and on the published record one of the most promising new restaurants in Brooklyn this fall.

Price: Moderately expensive. Small plates about $18 to $28, mains $30 to $50 per Eater, desserts around $16, cocktails $17 (Brooklyn Magazine). The restaurant’s site does not list prices.

Address: 129 Havemeyer Street, between Grand and South First Streets, Williamsburg. Open Wednesday through Saturday, 5 to 10 p.m., and Sunday, 4 to 9 p.m. Reservations through SevenRooms from the restaurant’s site. Tables open 15 days ahead at 9 a.m., and parties of more than six are asked to email the restaurant, according to New York City Wave.

Reservations weighs menus, prices, the published record and the critical consensus; when our critic has dined, we say so. For this review, our critic has not dined at Mythily. All quoted judgments of the food and service belong to the critics and outlets named and linked above.

Featured image: Havemeyer Street at South Fourth Street in Williamsburg, beneath the highway spur to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, a few blocks south of Mythily. Photo by Tdorante10 via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.