You can eat art at this new restaurant

Care to go on a little hunt for dimsums? We take a trip to Lili

02 Apr 2026

It’s not often you find a Picante that really means business. It’s even rarer to find a restaurant that not only shakes up a fiery glass of picante, but wears its interiors as equally decadently as the dishes on the menu. For a new Cantonese kitchen and bar in Hyderabad called Lili, these were all a part of the plan. Say for starters, a gigantic dimsum casually dangles above the bar. Functionally a chandelier designed by Goa-based artist Siddharth Kerkar, diners sip away under the dimsum’s hypnotic glow as the bartender mixes punchy cocktails. “I wanted the space to have an identity. Although there are over 30 artworks here, the giant dimsum sets a dramatic warm glow,” he says.

Launched by the trio Abhilasha Oruganti, Naveen Krishna and Navyatha Reddy, the 45-seater restaurant sprawls 1,000 sq ft. With Siddharth on board who custom-crafted a cluster of art pieces, Lili bets on the adventures of small-scale spaces in a city like Hyderabad, where big gatherings and larger than life restaurants have always been the unspoken rule. So how does Lili woo its diners with the concept of an intimate-seated setting?

lili restaurant hyderabad in jubilee hills — Photographs courtesy Lili

For smaller spaces, Siddharth tells me, “attention to detail matters.” It lies in the quiet dramatics of textures and colours, light and shadow, larger spaces and smaller corners. I drop by the restaurant an hour before they reopen for their evening slot. Parked on Road no. 45 in Jubilee Hills, to reach Lili, I pass by an almost-cult coffee chain. The chatter and honking are on full decibels on the road. A busy, buzzing neighbourhood indeed. Inside Lili, all the noise fades away to a naught. Gliding up a long staircase first, the sight catches hanging lamps that look like massive dragon eggs. I see the daylight sneaking in, washing over the textured off-white walls. Red seems to be the dress code for interiors, thanks to Lili’s Cantonese-cuisine influence. Like the grand dimsum light, the space magnifies on theatrics some more, to a point where the restaurant nudges me to think that art-viewing must not solely be limited to museums and galleries. It could also happen outside of galleries — like restaurants that double up as venues for installations and artworks.

Asia through colours and materials

The space navigates a rather simple layout. A common dining area punctuated by the bar as its central pulse, while on one end, hides the private dining room (PDR) with a duplicate dimsum chandelier.

I can say it for myself, there exists an otherworldly material pull inside Lili. While sipping the picante that the mixologist Gaurav Dhyani recommended, I notice the bar facade wrapped in hand-beaten copper with fish motifs on it. Zooming in further, an overflowing red dimsum cart sits on a shelf behind the bar. Elsewhere, wood and leather co-exist with the tactile gloss of ceramic tableware. And, on the far end by a sun-dappled window, rotates a red lacquered head — embellished with dimsums (yet again). Whimsy follows the sight at every turn. Abhilasha nudges me towards the sculptural head of the Chinese diplomat and traveller Zheng He on one wall, which also glides from end to the other.

Why intimate-seaters work?

For intimate-seaters, colours need to be intelligently approached. Lili does it by dipping itself into a palette of crimson red, olive green and soft beige. The restaurant is designed such that it changes temperament day through evening — surprisingly airy and luminous before dusk, but moody and electric in the night — while the layout allows an intriguing balance between movement and pause. You choose where you spend your time gazing away at an artwork.

This leads me to wonder why small-format dining spaces are so compelling: details are embedded in intentionality, pace feels slower, meals become cosy and memory suddenly seems to remember a scatter of sensorial experiences, from the clink of cutlery to the flicker of candles burning softly by a textured wall. So next time you go out for a meal, look out for spaces that perhaps host fewer seats, and leave more room for memory?