Fine dining that feels like home: the story behind Chef Avishar Barua’s second Columbus restaurant, Agni

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Tue, 09 Dec 2025 04:57:10 +0000
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When designing his second restaurant, Chef Avishar Barua — an Ohio State alumnus — said he wanted the experience to feel like a dinner party with friends.?

Agni, a Bengali American fine-dining restaurant located in the Brewery District, brings just that — warm tones, hanging photos of visitors and shelves filled with cookbooks and keepsakes from his mother’s home.

“I want the restaurant to feel like somebody’s home,” Barua said. “I didn’t want it to feel like a restaurant per se, I wanted it to feel like you came to a dinner party at my house.”

Opened in March 2023, Agni offers 14 courses on their tasting menu, priced at $165 per person, according to Agni’s website. Since opening, Agni has received multiple national and local awards — including USA TODAY’s 2025 Restaurants of the Year and Bon Appétit’s 20 Best New Restaurants of 2024.?

In October, Barua appeared on Food Network’s competitive cooking show “Bobby’s Triple Threat,” where he said he made an elevated version of chaat-poti — a dish on the Agni menu. While he did not win the competition, Chef Bobby Flay praised his work and asked for his recipe.

Barua also competed on Season 18 of “Top Chef,” another competitive cooking show, where he placed 9th overall, according to Top Chef stats.

Barua graduated from Ohio State in 2009 with a degree in psychology and biology, intending to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a doctor, according to the Ohio State Alumni Magazine. After discovering his passion for cooking, he deviated and pursued the culinary program at Columbus Community College.?

Barua said Joya’s — his daytime fast-casual café located in Worthington and named after his mother — was supposed to be the office for Agni, however he decided to open two restaurants instead.

Barua said Agni reflects his mother’s influence in both its menu, inspired by her cooking, and its emphasis on hospitality, a priority in his culture.

“If somebody comes in, you give them water, you give them food, right away,” Barua said. “We have a welcome beverage here, for instance, for that reason. Culturally, I would be in trouble if I didn’t do that.”

Barua said he and his staff regularly rely on his mother as a source of guidance, often visiting her home to learn and document techniques and recipes.

“Luckily, Joya, [Barua’s] mother, is very generous with what she teaches,” JJ Garlock, chef de cuisine at Agni, said. “I’ll go over to her house and cook alongside her, and it’s a very special experience.”

Barua said the restaurant’s name, Agni, means “fire” and is a reference to the Hindu god of fire. He said he wanted the interior to reflect the name, and with the help of a designer, he chose elements such as burnt-wood and warm tones.??

“I’m learning about all these things that have nothing to do with food, but they’re really important for the ambience,” Barua said.

The back of the restaurant includes a private dining room guests can reserve, which seats up to 10 people and provides a more exclusive setting for patrons, according to the reservation website. The shelves in the room are decorated with items from Joya’s house, including pictures from Bangladesh and awards Barua won in his childhood, he said.

“All these strange things that are around, they kind of tell the whole story of what this restaurant’s supposed to be,” Barua said.

Other décor elements of the restaurant include cookbooks Barua said he learned from, textiles and paintings.

“We just brought a bunch of stuff together that we thought would slowly and subtly tell the story of what’s going on in here,” Barua said.

Although his mother is a Bengali immigrant, Barua said he recognizes that the Bengali flavors he grew up with were adapted for American diners.

“Representation is cool because it kind of goes 50-50,” Barua said. “For a lot of Bengali people, I was too American. For a lot of American people, I was too Bengali.”

Barua said the restaurant is not meant to be a traditional Bengali restaurant and reflects his love for cooking, no matter what type of cuisine.

“I love to make all kinds of food,” Barua said. “I learned all these things and I never realized the core of where I come from would be so important to distinguishing ourselves or contributing to the conversation.”

Garlock said while many dishes draw from flavors Barua grew up with, the menu is also influenced from his professional journey, such as his time cooking at Mission Chinese in New York, which inspired him to offer dishes such as dumplings and bao.

“I wouldn’t consider us a Bengali restaurant,” Garlock said. “The only reason why we serve Bengali food is because of [Barua’s] background. It’s more of a [Barua] restaurant than a Bengali restaurant.”

Barua said operating both Joya’s and Agni has been challenging, but it has pushed him to trust his team and allows him to serve more of the community.

“I want to feed more people,” Barua said. “It seems like people want more of it, so we’re going to try to figure out how to do that.”

More information about Agni can be found on the restaurant’s website.