Indian food beyond butter chicken
Published: 04:08 PM,Aug 23,2024 | EDITED : 08:08 PM,Aug 23,2024
Butter Chicken
By Priya Krishna
Are we done with the butter-chicken era of Indian restaurants? With being asked to choose a spice level from 1 to 10 for entrees? With having to hear the redundant phrase “naan bread”?
That’s what I wondered as I dunked a Parle-G biscuit into chai at Bungalow and noticed that the dining room was completely packed, the line to get in stretched down First Avenue and the bar was standing room only.
It wasn’t always this way. When I began working in food journalism 11 years ago, the hard-to-get-into restaurants in New York City were usually Italian, French or ‘new American.’ At these places, my friends and I were often the only people of colour sitting in the dining room. We grew accustomed to being forgotten around mid-meal, or being seated next to the bathrooms.
What a difference a decade makes. Some of the most coveted tables in New York today are at restaurants — like Semma and Dhamaka — serving lesser-known regional dishes from around India. Checking around last Friday, I could have landed a dinner reservation for four at coveted places like Lilia, Carbone and Torrisi in the next few weeks, but there wasn’t a single opening at Bungalow.
The rise of regional Indian restaurants that draw big crowds and attention without cutting corners to please a non-South Asian audience — the owners of Semma and Dhamaka even named their company Unapologetic Foods — has been happening for several years. But Bungalow doesn’t need to declare its lack of apologies. This is a restaurant by South Asians, for South Asians, and if others want to join in, they’re welcome, too.
On all three of my visits, the restaurant — a handsome space with ornate rugs and busy floral wallpaper that feels more like a stately ancestral home than a dining room — was filled primarily with people of South Asian descent. Influencers in cargo pants and jhumkas filmed themselves under a skylight covered in winding branches of faux jasmine. Besuited bros clinked glasses of Kashmiri chile-infused mezcal under brass chandeliers. Aunties in kurtas and Hokas lounged in suede banquettes, giving approving nods to the crisp shells of Banarasi puri filled with potatoes and tangy chutneys.
Anyone with aunties knows they don’t give the nod unless they mean it. That was my first indication that Bungalow is more than just another pretty place fronted by a celebrity chef — in this case, Vikas Khanna, who has hosted several television shows, including seven seasons of ‘MasterChef India,’ a hit competition series with millions of viewers. His cooking is wildly interesting.
The menu is a lesson in regional Indian food and the creative possibilities contained within it. It defies preconception or oversimplification, neither strictly traditional nor fusion.
Mr Khanna makes a version of galouti kebab, a silky-on-the-inside, crisp-on-the-outside patty from the northern city Lucknow. But he subs out the traditional mutton filling with mashed kidney beans, stuffs them between two slices of fried lotus root, and serves it all atop walnut-radish raita. Think Oreo in structure, with an uncanny depth of flavor.
Bungalow’s ghee roast, a dish in which meat is typically cooked in fat until meltingly tender, is built around plantains, enhancing their richness and sweetness. The peels are turned into a smooth, tangy ketchup that sings. Strained yogurt encased in shreds of kataifi and deep-fried — Khanna compared the technique to frying ice cream in the dough — is unexpectedly, and pleasantly, as sweet as it is savory.
There’s a deeply personal side to many dishes. An ode to Khanna’s childhood love of cream rolls arrives in a cone of puff pastry stuffed with an earthy-sweet shrimp balchao from Goa that’s stewed in coconut vinegar and tamarind paste, crowned with a crunchy curry leaf. And Ammi’s lamb chops, undergirded with sour mango powder, are pure primal satisfaction. This is the kind of cooking that may surprise even those who consider themselves familiar with Indian cuisine. It’s inviting, self-assured, and just fun to eat.
To eat at Bungalow is to be reminded that Indian restaurants no longer need to cater to a white audience to find broad success. South Asian Americans have never been more visible or powerful in this country. They’re starring in movies, winning Grammy Awards, and vying to become president and second lady. Even the name, Bungalow, and its décor suggest a reclamation of a local term that was co-opted by the British for the structures they built during their occupation of India.
Bungalow is full of if-you-know-you-know touches: the robust use of Amul cheese, a funky favourite of the diaspora found in the delightfully gooey kulcha and the lamb kebab; the rattan chairs that recall your nani’s house; those black-and-white photos of unsmiling family members sitting in neat rows. Even the cocktails run on Indian Standard Time; on each of my visits, they arrived after I was already a few courses in.
I wonder, too, what will happen if Khanna’s commitments as a TV chef mean he can’t be around every night to suffuse the dining room with his charm. – The New York Times
Are we done with the butter-chicken era of Indian restaurants? With being asked to choose a spice level from 1 to 10 for entrees? With having to hear the redundant phrase “naan bread”?
That’s what I wondered as I dunked a Parle-G biscuit into chai at Bungalow and noticed that the dining room was completely packed, the line to get in stretched down First Avenue and the bar was standing room only.
It wasn’t always this way. When I began working in food journalism 11 years ago, the hard-to-get-into restaurants in New York City were usually Italian, French or ‘new American.’ At these places, my friends and I were often the only people of colour sitting in the dining room. We grew accustomed to being forgotten around mid-meal, or being seated next to the bathrooms.
What a difference a decade makes. Some of the most coveted tables in New York today are at restaurants — like Semma and Dhamaka — serving lesser-known regional dishes from around India. Checking around last Friday, I could have landed a dinner reservation for four at coveted places like Lilia, Carbone and Torrisi in the next few weeks, but there wasn’t a single opening at Bungalow.
The rise of regional Indian restaurants that draw big crowds and attention without cutting corners to please a non-South Asian audience — the owners of Semma and Dhamaka even named their company Unapologetic Foods — has been happening for several years. But Bungalow doesn’t need to declare its lack of apologies. This is a restaurant by South Asians, for South Asians, and if others want to join in, they’re welcome, too.
On all three of my visits, the restaurant — a handsome space with ornate rugs and busy floral wallpaper that feels more like a stately ancestral home than a dining room — was filled primarily with people of South Asian descent. Influencers in cargo pants and jhumkas filmed themselves under a skylight covered in winding branches of faux jasmine. Besuited bros clinked glasses of Kashmiri chile-infused mezcal under brass chandeliers. Aunties in kurtas and Hokas lounged in suede banquettes, giving approving nods to the crisp shells of Banarasi puri filled with potatoes and tangy chutneys.
Anyone with aunties knows they don’t give the nod unless they mean it. That was my first indication that Bungalow is more than just another pretty place fronted by a celebrity chef — in this case, Vikas Khanna, who has hosted several television shows, including seven seasons of ‘MasterChef India,’ a hit competition series with millions of viewers. His cooking is wildly interesting.
The menu is a lesson in regional Indian food and the creative possibilities contained within it. It defies preconception or oversimplification, neither strictly traditional nor fusion.
Mr Khanna makes a version of galouti kebab, a silky-on-the-inside, crisp-on-the-outside patty from the northern city Lucknow. But he subs out the traditional mutton filling with mashed kidney beans, stuffs them between two slices of fried lotus root, and serves it all atop walnut-radish raita. Think Oreo in structure, with an uncanny depth of flavor.
Bungalow’s ghee roast, a dish in which meat is typically cooked in fat until meltingly tender, is built around plantains, enhancing their richness and sweetness. The peels are turned into a smooth, tangy ketchup that sings. Strained yogurt encased in shreds of kataifi and deep-fried — Khanna compared the technique to frying ice cream in the dough — is unexpectedly, and pleasantly, as sweet as it is savory.
There’s a deeply personal side to many dishes. An ode to Khanna’s childhood love of cream rolls arrives in a cone of puff pastry stuffed with an earthy-sweet shrimp balchao from Goa that’s stewed in coconut vinegar and tamarind paste, crowned with a crunchy curry leaf. And Ammi’s lamb chops, undergirded with sour mango powder, are pure primal satisfaction. This is the kind of cooking that may surprise even those who consider themselves familiar with Indian cuisine. It’s inviting, self-assured, and just fun to eat.
To eat at Bungalow is to be reminded that Indian restaurants no longer need to cater to a white audience to find broad success. South Asian Americans have never been more visible or powerful in this country. They’re starring in movies, winning Grammy Awards, and vying to become president and second lady. Even the name, Bungalow, and its décor suggest a reclamation of a local term that was co-opted by the British for the structures they built during their occupation of India.
Bungalow is full of if-you-know-you-know touches: the robust use of Amul cheese, a funky favourite of the diaspora found in the delightfully gooey kulcha and the lamb kebab; the rattan chairs that recall your nani’s house; those black-and-white photos of unsmiling family members sitting in neat rows. Even the cocktails run on Indian Standard Time; on each of my visits, they arrived after I was already a few courses in.
I wonder, too, what will happen if Khanna’s commitments as a TV chef mean he can’t be around every night to suffuse the dining room with his charm. – The New York Times