In Hyderabad’s TheySee, you eat with your eyes first

You walk up a flight of stairs and, before the restaurant even comes into view, you are greeted with life-sized, almost confrontational, matchboxes—vintage desi graphics, Telugu script, chilli reds and mustard yellows stacked along the wall like the embodiment of collective memory. It seems like the object has been taken from its keepsake form you may have seen in dining rooms like Kaspers, Bombay Daak, and Bar Paradox, and blown up 10 times for effect.

Inside TheySee (a play on the word desi), the first thing the restaurant does is bathe you in red before you’ve sat down. It’s theatrical, which seems to be the running theme. On a lone bench at the entryway, there’s an idol of a Raja Ravi Varma-esque woman holding a guitar instead of a sitar. On the left is a glass vestibule entirely crimson-tinted, ‘Referral only’ etched on the door, which I learn is See, a referral-based bar (more on that later).

The design language, conceived by an Auroville collective, is abstract. A clear canopy held up by tree-like columns with sweeping circular beams—somewhere between a greenhouse and a treehouse—has dozens of hand-blown glass globes hanging from it in loose clusters. The servers all wear LED name tags. Underfoot, too, there’s a lot going on: yellow and white mosaic in one section, Athangudi-style checkered tiles in another, a geometric runner somewhere else. Vivid red dome lamps on bobbin-turned wooden stands are bright like bobbleheads in daylight and molten after dark. The landscaping too is deliberately haphazard; there are banana trees, because a coconut tree would have been too obvious and a ficus too neutral.

On the tables: a ceramic matchbox—with a sliding drawer, moustachioed face and ‘Light It Up’ written in vintage type—doubles as ashtray and salt tray. Later, the bill arrives in the same box with a nostalgic sweet tucked inside. Rekha winks at you from a coaster while you wait for your drink. 

At See next door, a foreboding red Nazar Battu sculpture stares at you from the bar’s entrance. Niharika Gollapalli, one of the three founders, calls it embracing the jugaad spirit.TheySee is designed for those who love details. “There is gold, there is red, and modern elements sit alongside Indian ones,” Gollapalli says, adding, “We have kept it abstract on purpose.”

Chef Suryansh Singh Kanwar brings five years on the IPL circuit—cooking for Hardik Pandya’s squads, T20 World Cup camps, and appetites from Lucknow to the West Indies to the table. Darshan Ramchandani, who cut his hospitality teeth managing 200-cover weekends at a Michelin-recognised pub in Maida Vale, holds the front together. 

They are all in their twenties, but they’re not kidding around with the scale of the space—76 covers across an open deck and an indoor 20-seat PDR. What’s interesting, and perhaps not entirely planned for, is who actually shows up: the multigenerational family tables on a weekday afternoon outnumber the young creatives the space was built for, drawn, presumably, by the desi anchor of the menu. “We are so unapologetically loud and Indian at the core, but we’ve grown up watching the world,” Gollapalli says, “and this place is coming from that intersection.”

The mains have it

For chef Kanwar, around 30 per cent of his menu is autobiographical. The butter chicken is his mother’s. The chicken gassi with pav was a combination he first encountered at actor Sunil Shetty’s home in Mumbai and couldn’t shake. The rajma hummus with a pav cracker was made originally for his girlfriend. Country-jumping has given Kanwar something more useful than technique: an acute understanding of how India actually eats. The menu reflects that observation.

It shows most beautifully in the mains. The Baigan ke Baata—fried eggplant, peanut salan, bagara crumble, curry leaf oil—is a triumph, a papery crackle of skin giving way to a fleshy interior. Roz Khao Ande—podi kimchi, 62-degree eggs, avakai hollandaise, dibbe roti—is tart and fermented, its spice matching the locals’ love of heat. The kali miri seekh, moistened with Belper Knolle cheese (from Eleftheria) and dusted with sansyo pepper and gongura, melts on first bite. The Smoky AF Butter Chicken—half tandoori chicken, smoked makhni gravy, chilli oil—is the menu’s most self-assured dish, familiar and comforting.

The breads read like an Indian bread dictionary and are worth the journey alone—from piri piri lachha paratha to Goan poee to tingmo. They are fun to dip, swipe or just enjoy by themselves. The Fly Rice (jasmine rice, Schezwan chutney, furikake, prawn, and chicken) is the menu’s most honest self-portrait: desi appetite meets videshi influences.

Where the kitchen is still finding its footing is in the starters. Oh So Corny! (tadka corn custard, corn mousse, corn crispies) is crowd-pleasing on paper but feels slightly below the register of everything else on the menu. Buggs Bunny’s Tiffin, featuring tandoor-roasted carrots, carrot purée and feta, has a mash that sits closer to bland baby food. And the Kokum Kissed Tuna (kokum-cured tuna, tamarind gel, curry leaf boondi, teekha aguachile) is where there’s a visible waver. With the fish cured past the point of structural integrity, what should be clean acid-set resistance arrives instead as an over-processed chew. The aguachile (aka pani-puri pani) needed to be hotter, zestier. 

Desserts earn their space. Split Happens (Mangalore buns, mascarpone, bruléed banana, pistachio crumble) is worth finishing on. Not So Chilli Cheese Toast (fried milk bread, white chocolate rabdi, brunost cheese) is light and exacting when it arrives at its familiar-strange combination.

The broader question, posed with curiosity rather than impatience, is whether keeping the Indian core intact and adjusting primarily at the level of plating is where TheySee intends to settle or merely where it begins. It is commercially sound for a city still warming to the adventurous. But the kitchen’s intelligence hints that it has more to say.

Gongura in your drink

Behind the bar is Pradyumna Shanker, who was head mixologist at the Ritz-Carlton Bangalore for four years, Mixologist of the Year at The Leela Goa in 2021, and one of the top three at the Diageo World Class Championship global final in São Paulo.

His Akela Kela, prepared with gin, Campari, and nendran banana, is spirit-forward, the banana present without cloying. Kaala Jaadu—tequila, Guntur chilli, gongura, citrus—is the most regionally drawns cocktail: a slow-burn chilli heat and sour gongura that doesn’t bury the tequila. Chowpatty, a tequila, mezcal, grapefruit, mango and CO2 drink, is crisp and well-balanced.

Where the bar falters is in the same place the kitchen occasionally does: the reach for more when less would have done better. In Masala Market, featuring gin, turmeric, and methi, the acrid bitterness of soaked methi overwhelms the gin entirely. This, when Hyderabad’s drinking culture is still committed to sweet-sour profiles and shows limited appetite for the restraint that makes a cocktail genuinely interesting. Shanker has the pantry. The menu is most alive when he uses it with precision rather than abundance.

You can sit with us

Hidden within TheySee is a 20-seater cocktail and dining space built on a curated referral programme, almost like a concierge relationship. The music shifts here: an Afro-desi blend, high energy and tasteful.

The food inside this space, called See, is fabulous. A Masala Fapad with avocado tartare and kachumber, a Bheja Fry with gongura, and an iconic memory passed through a magnifying glass: Maggie Nudele is essentially udon with magic masala and slurpy cheese. The drinks are equally spirited. Think a Guava and Yuzu See-Kante (a picante riff, naturally) and the cackle-worthy Laura's Lassun, a smoked tequila and mezcal old fashioned with black garlic and cacao bitters that was, without contest, the evening's favourite. End your night with Aaaais Cream — freshly churned, flavour of the day. I was privy to a Horlicks one, and I couldn't have been happier.

The second time you walk through that red door, the team already knows you. TheySee is the Indian home, warm and welcoming. See is the informal secret room tucked within it.

Hyderabad will embrace the familiar that’s dressed beautifully. The more interesting question, the one TheySee will have to answer in time, is whether it will push further. Ramchandani focuses on this appetite for evolution: “We never want someone to feel bored,” he says. “The food, the elements—everything will keep changing.” If it does, then what TheySee is right now may only be the opening argument.

Address: Plot No 8-2, 293/82/A/161, Road 13, Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad - 500033

Timings: Monday to Thursday and Sunday: 12 pm to 3 pm; 7 pm to 11:30 pm. Fri and Sat: 12 pm to 3 pm and 7 pm to 12:30 am

Reservations: +91 8885019091

Price for two: ₹4,500 including drinks