Omnivore - Chef Asha Gomez’s Cardamom Hill is closing

The local chef closes one door while planning to open two others

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  • James Camp/CL File
  • OPEN AND SHUT: Chef Asha Gomez is closing Cardamom Hill, but has two other eateries in the works


After a two-and-a-half year run, chef Asha Gomez confirmed that her flagship Northside Drive restaurant Cardamom HIll will shutter “after dinner service on July 28.” The news, which was first reported this morning by the AJC’s Bob Townsend, comes just five days after Gomez announced that her new “Indian patisserie” Spice to Table would open August 1.

With yet another project - a fried chicken stand called Spice Road Chicken - set to open in Krog Street Market later this year, Gomez referred to the closing of Cardamom Hill as “bittersweet.”

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“It was such a great ride,” Gomez told the AJC. “It put such an amazing spotlight on regional Indian cuisine — something that I never thought possible, to take Kerala cuisine and elevate it to the grandeur that I believed it deserved. And then to have had the critics and our guests enjoy it and accept it. It was a great, great experience. But it was also a learning experience.”

Cardamom Hill was named among Bon Appétit magazine’s Top 50 Best New Restaurants in 2012. The restaurant was also a James Beard Foundation semi-finalist for best new restaurant in 2013. During that same year, Gomez was nominated for Food & Wine magazine’s “The People’s Best New Chef” award.