Asif Syed cooked at the White House in 2022. Before that, he beat Bobby Flay with tandoori chicken. The order matters: you do not get invited to the White House without having done something first.
Tandoori is the dish that is impossible to fake without a tandoor — a clay oven that hits 900°F and cooks the chicken in eight minutes flat, the yogurt marinade charring at the edges and steaming the interior in the same window. American kitchens do not have tandoors. Syed has spent a career building workarounds that don't lie about what they are.
21 Spices in Naples is closed now, after nine years. The chicken is not.