See

There's no phone number for See. No listing on any reservation app, no walk-in option, no public Instagram you can scroll to preview the room before you commit. The only way in is a referral code from someone who's already sat inside, or a spot on a waitlist that routes through the founders themselves. It sounds like a gimmick until you're standing at the red door.

See is tucked inside TheySee, the restaurant and bar in Jubilee Hills, but it operates as its own universe – a 22-seater dreamed up by Niharika Gollapalli, Chef Suryansh Singh and Darshan Ramchandani, with a cocktail programme from Pradyumna Shanker. Step through that door and the whole register shifts: an Afro-Indian soundtrack, a fibreglass Nazar Battu standing sentinel by the entrance, mechanical flipbooks lining the walls, ceramic ashtrays and lamps made by hand. Come back a second time and the team already has your name ready for your LED badge. 

But here's the part that surprised me: the food is the real draw… not the theatrics, and not even the drinks.

The seekh paratha undersells itself on the menu – lamb seekh folded into a khasta paratha with kanda and fresh mint; it turns out to be the dish I'd go back for on its own. The NRI rice bowl is the kitchen's most ambitious plate, and it holds ground: kala lamb fry over jasmine rice, soy yolks, curd chillies, and majiga pulusu, each element pulling the dish in a different direction until you take that first bite where it all comes together. Bheja fry gets a gongura sharpness that keeps it from tipping into heaviness, all soft richness undercut by tang. And dessert, styled as the ‘Chocolate Crime Scene,’ is a choco lava cake with white chocolate ice cream and pista crumble that is served in a chilled tub.

Without quite matching that precision, the cocktails are inventive. Laura's Lassan, once you get past the name, is the one to order: reposado tequila and mezcal built around cacao bitters and black garlic pickle, finished with a wisp of smoked oak that pulls the whole thing toward savoury rather than sweet, it's the drink on the list with the most going on. See-Kante takes tequila and mezcal in the opposite direction, brightened with guava, grapefruit and yuzu and sharpened with a jalapeño soda kick. Michelle's Adda riffs on a Michelada with Mexican beer, fresh citrus and Tabasco, deepened by lacto-fermented tomato water into something more savoury and layered. Eww Soo Cheejy is the outlier – cheddar-washed gin, peppermint, and wine – curious rather than purely enjoyable, more a conversation piece than a drink you'll order twice.

See understands that scarcity is part of the flavour. But strip away the red door and the referral codes, and there's still a kitchen outperforming its own bar programme, which is the harder trick to pull off. Still harder is entering without the code – that wasn’t a joke. So make sure you find it, or find someone who can.