On a more serious note, the Bombay-born Cardoz, who made his reputation at Tabla, Danny Meyer’s fine-dining Indian restaurant in New York, said he was “happy for the people who matter, now that my platform is taller and higher.”
The highly regarded Tabla closed last December, after twelve years, but come November Cardoz will head up a new Meyer/Union Square Hospitality Group property: North End Grill in Battery Park City.
Among those who watched the finale with him was his mother, who came from her home in India. Her husband – his father — died of cancer, and in his memory Cardoz, who was a biochemistry student before turning to the culinary world, is donating his $100,000 winnings to the Young Scientists Cancer Research Fund at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.