Rikki Tikki- Kensington Market

Rikki Tikki takes its name from Chef Ricky, folding his own name into the Indian flavour and culture he cooks from — a small tell that this Kensington Market restaurant is one cook's personal read on Indian food rather than a template dropped onto Augusta Avenue. The menu refuses to sit in a single lane. Tandoori platters, coastal seafood curries, Tamilian-style chicken, vegetarian curries, biryani, chaat and Indo-Chinese snacks all come out of the same kitchen, which makes Rikki Tikki less a curry stop than a room a table can walk into without agreeing on one thing first.

The clearest first order is the Chef's Mix Platter, a tandoori sampler that pulls chicken, shrimp, paneer, cauliflower and mushroom onto one plate and shows the grill working across proteins and vegetables in a single pass. From there the curries reach past the familiar butter-chicken lane. Lobster Butter Curry sets marinated lobster in a rich tomato gravy; Murraya Koenigii Chicken cooks Tamilian-style with curry leaves; Coconut Paneer Steak and Smoky Mashed Eggplant give the vegetarian side its own centrepieces. Bread gets the same care: Rikki's Special Basket collects mix kulcha, paneer chili kulcha and laccha paratha into one house order, so naan is never an afterthought.

What the spread says about the kitchen is that it cooks from memory rather than from a category. Hyderabadi home-style gravies for chicken and lamb sit beside a Braised Lamb Shank finished in red wine and rosemary, and the vegetarian half runs deep enough — Saag Paneer, Paneer Shahi, Dal Makhni, Chilli Paneer — that it never reads as an afterthought. Coconut Prawn Curry and a Halibut Fish Curry push the coastal side further than most North Indian kitchens bother to, cooking seafood in coconut cream and fresh herbs.

Chef Ricky opened the restaurant in early 2022 — a soft opening in February, doors fully open by the start of March, according to local reporting at the time. It ran as a passion project from the beginning, and the Augusta Avenue address dropped it into one of the city's busiest food crowds, where a personal Indian kitchen has to earn a table against a dense field of neighbours. Four years on, it has settled into the neighbourhood's regular rotation.

There's a whole snacking half to the menu that rewards a bigger table. The chaat runs from Aloo Tikki Chaat to Samosa Chaat to Pani Puri, and the Indo-Chinese corner — Gobi Manchurian, Chilli Paneer or Chilli Tofu, Chili Idli — brings the Hakka-style heat that Toronto Indian menus have long carried alongside the curries. A group can book a table or bar seats online and build a meal that moves from the tandoor to a coastal curry to a shared bread basket without anyone settling for the same plate twice.

The daypart menus are where the kitchen stretches past a conventional dinner service. Lunch runs midday around plates like Masala Dosa and lighter South Indian orders; a late-night menu picks up after ten with Pani Puri, Veg Momos, Chili Idli and Karampodi Chicken, a snack-forward second act rather than a clearance of the kitchen. The bar keeps the same accent — a Rikki Tikki Special of Malibu and vodka with raspberry, coconut and mint, an Indian Roadside Lemon Soda mixed with mint and house spices, lassi, and cocktails and mocktails alongside beer and wine. One address handles a reserved dinner, a market-day group table and a late plate of chaat, and the menu changes character as the hours do — dosas at midday, the full tandoor at dinner, chaat and momos once the market outside has gone quiet.