Avishar Barua on Agni, Joya's and Honoring Columbus

Just because a dish is well executed does not mean it has to feel stuffy. And just because you have culinary school training and a Michelin-starred kitchen on your resume does not mean you cannot dedicate your career to making dining the most fun part of someone's day. That is exactly what Avishar Barua is doing in Columbus, Ohio. And Columbus has never tasted better.

Avishar Barua is a two-time James Beard Award semifinalist and the founder of Agni and Joya's, the two Columbus restaurants that make up Serious Fun, his restaurant group built around one beautiful and completely genuine philosophy: that serious hospitality and joyful dining are not opposites. They are the point. Agni is a tasting menu experience in the Brewery District where you can find a happy meal course and keeps candy at the bar. Joya's is a fast casual spot in Old Worthington where the chicken sandwich is messy and magnificent. Both feel like home. That is entirely on purpose.

In this episode, host Sarah Perkins sits down with Avishar for one of the most wide-ranging and genuinely joyful conversations The Perfect Bite has ever had. From a Bengali American childhood in Columbus where he survived entirely on candy and his mom's strategically disguised rice balls, to a pre-med track at Ohio State that gave way to an organic chemistry A and a culinary epiphany. From a stage at Mission Chinese Food under Danny Bowien where he bought salt and vinegar chips for a dish and thought he was being hazed, to an unpaid stage at WD-50 where he got his ass kicked daily and then got hired. From a legendary taco at Service Bar that landed him in Food and Wine and on Top Chef Season 18, to the quiet, patient decade of building something in Columbus that honors the city, its immigrant restaurants, and its people, rather than trying to be New York.

Columbus is Columbus. That is his whole philosophy. And it is more than enough.

In this episode, we cover:

Growing up Bengali American in Columbus surviving on candy, junk food, and his mom's strategically disguised rice ballsThe first memory of food he actually loved: Chinese food and chow fun noodlesDiscovering cooking in college out of necessity: a foil pan, chopsticks as a roasting rack, and a library cookbookCombining his biology and psychology degrees into a way of thinking about food and peopleHis brother's restaurant Eight: his first kitchen, where mac and cheese was made with bechamel and pot roast was actually burgundy braised short ribThe Columbus