Traversing Lore’s Indian European American Menu in Five Dishes 

1. Fermented Dosa

The dosa, a staple of South Indian cuisine, is filled with masala potatoes and served with a coconut and mint chutney, a tomato chutney, and sambar. It’s a sharable starter, but can also be a main, should you want it all to yourself. It’s so beloved that, this past summer, Kumar started a weekend stall at Smorgasburg in Prospect Park, called Dosa Brooklyn, where he served nothing but dosas.

Dosas were a staple of Kumar’s childhood in Mangalore.“We used to eat dosas at least four days a week with potatoes, with lentils, with sambar, with chutneys, and sometimes with the leftovers from the day before, like a fish curry. Dosa was like a carrier, and we could put in whatever we wanted.

“And I said when I started the restaurant, we need to have the dosa there, because there is no good dosa in New York, that feels like home,” says Kumar. “I’ll never take it off the menu.”

Making the dosa isn’t simple, though; it’s a three-day process. “We soak the rice, lentils, and fenugreek, and then blend it after eight hours, and then keep it for at least 24 hours for it to ferment. And that’s the reason why you have that crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside texture.

“And, and the masala potatoes are very special, because my father used to make that. It was his recipe, and it’s also from Mangalore itself. It’s typical Mangalorian,” says Kumar.

2. Delicata Squash

The delicata squash at Lore, another starter, is seasonal and presents crispy-on-the-outside, tender-on-the-inside squash drizzled with chile crisp and crispy squash seeds, on a bed of housemade baba ghanoush. This dish was inspired by Kumar’s wife, Daria.

“When I first met Daria, and she invited me to Brooklyn, she actually made this amazing dish with squash,” says Kumar. “I’m not a big fan of squash. And I’m like, this is so crispy, and it’s got an amazing texture inside.”

During the pandemic, the two decamped to upstate New York for a time, before they opened the restaurant. While they were there, Kumar experimented with making a squash dish, adding baba ghanoush as a base, and employing the same technique that Daria had used for the squash: season, roast, and double-fry.

3. Seared Scallops

This entree sounds like an odd mix of flavors at first read: “Seared scallops with tadka-spiced yogurt rice, housemade plum chutney, curry leaves.” It’s the perfect example of Kumar taking Indian dishes from his childhood and melding them with European techniques and ingredients.

“Whatever leftover rice was there when I was growing up, my grandmother used to make a dish with it with curds — with yogurt — and we used to call it curd rice. It starts with tadka — tempered oil with lentils, mustard seed, red chiles, and some garlic and curry leaves, and that goes into the rice with yogurt and some salt. That would be served with some mango pickles or some fried fish for lunch the next day, and that was like a soul food for us.

“So I said, we’ve got to do something with this dish,” says Kumar. “One day, I got some samples from a fish purveyor; he sent us some scallops from Montauk. I marinated them with ginger-garlic oil and seared them. And then we had some plums, so I made a chutney out of the plums, and I plated it with the scallops, the plums, and the rice. And the combination was so good that I said, we’ve got to put it out there. But I wasn’t sure what people would think about it — it’s the most-selling dish right now on the menu!”

4. Sea Bream Ssam

Another staple fusion dish that’s been on the menu since the beginning, the sea bream ssam has clear Korean influences, but also uses a marinade made of a Malabar (the Indian coast from Karnataka to Kerala) spice mix, including fennel, chile, garlic, ginger, and coriander.

“We marinate the fish and then we use it as a ssam, which is from a totally different area of this world — Korea,” says Kumar. “I used to love this particular restaurant in Basel, it was a Chinese restaurant, but they had this dish, which was a Korean ssam, that they made with duck breast, and they had the kimchi, and little sauces on the side, and there was a piece of lime, and there were so many herbs, and it was such a fresh dish. It was so easy to eat, and there were no frills, just a tasty dish.

“I wanted to try something, but I wanted to use some of my own ingredients — the Malabar spices — to balance the dish. It’s very light, but at the same time, you have this fulfilled feeling because of the marinade, which has so many spices. It’s very subtle, but it’s still got the kick.

The sea bream is accompanied by lettuce, kimchi, lime, and fresh herbs, with a gochujang-onion puree with white balsamic as a hot sauce, and an Indian chutney with mint, cilantro, green chile, and curry leaf.

5. Duck Confit

This dish was born of Kumar’s time in Basel, which nears the borders of Germany and France. He often went to a charming restaurant in Rixheim, France, that focused on the German-French cuisine of the Alsace region. One night, the chef served him a special of duck confit, and it stuck with him.

“I had had duck confit before, but this particular duck confit, he cooked it at 70 degrees Celsius, but overnight, really slow, and just let it be, and the next day, it just falls off the bone. It had this pink color inside and that brown skin. And then he had celeriac, carrot, and a puree made with these different things, and a sauce, which was from the duck bones, which he made, and it was just insane,” says Kumar. “So I asked him how he did it, and he said, a duck confit, or any confit, is cooking slow it in its own fat, but you can put whatever you want in there to get the flavors. And that stuck in my mind.”

This, of course, inspired some Indian flavors for Kumar’s version. “I used garam masala in the fat, and some ginger and cardamom, and I wanted to have some puree. I had just had cannellini beans at Café Carmellini, and I loved them. So I said, let’s use ginger, fresh turmeric, and cannellini beans, and I made a puree out of it,” says Kumar. “And then I made a sauce out of coconut aminos with some ginger, garlic, and some butter. Now, I sell about 70 duck confits in a week — which is a big deal for a 25-seat-restaurant.”

Lore is open for dinner from 6 to 10 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday, and for brunch from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.

Devorah Lev-Tov is a food, beverage, wellness, and travel journalist with bylines in The New York Times, Food & Wine, Bon Appétit, Eater, Vogue, and more. She is the author of the recent book, 150 Spas You Need to Visit Before You Die. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children. Follow her dining adventures (usually at a reasonable hour) on Instagram. Follow Resy, too.