Gurgaon doesn’t lack Japanese restaurants. In fact, it embraced the cuisine long before it became shorthand for urban cool, and Golf Course Road now reads almost like a curated map of Far Eastern influences. Which is precisely why Oju, filmmaker Karan Johar’s latest restaurant, arrives without needing to announce itself loudly. It doesn’t rely on novelty, celebrity pull, or culinary theatrics to make its point. Instead, it slows things down. Co-owned by Johar and Truepalate H

If walls could talk, the Akbari Darwaza in Lucknow would whisper stories of silken kebabs, perfumed biryanis, and courtly gatherings that...