THEDRUNKENMUNKEY
A little Old Bombay on 92nd Street
family recipes, four generations on
Two friends, one table
The Drunken Munkey began with two childhood friends. Arun Mirchandani and Chirag Chaman grew up in Army families, where some of the best meals were the ones served in the mess hall — generous, unfussy, made to feed everyone at the table.
In 2013, Arun opened The Drunken Munkey on East 92nd Street — the Upper East Side's first dedicated craft-cocktail bar with a full Indian kitchen. It's the neighborhood spot he'd always wanted to build in his own backyard.
Recipes carried across a partition, kept across generations.
At the heart of the kitchen are family recipes. Many were created by Arun's grandmother, who carried them from Sindh to India at the time of Partition. Four generations later, those same dishes are still made the way she envisioned them — with patience, warmth, and a good deal of love.
Many of the vegetarian dishes come from Arun's mother, who lives close by and still spot-checks the kitchen regularly — a decade in. This is home-style cooking, served in a proper bistro setting.
“We serve the food we grew up on — the way we grew up eating it.”
Arun Mirchandani · Founder
Behind the bar
The cocktail, tracing home
Arun is the soul of the Munkey — a collector of the craft, from vintage bar tools to the stories behind a drink. He built the bar around a simple idea: that the cocktail itself traces back to India.
Punch was born in early 17th-century India, and its name comes from paanch — the Hindi word for five, for its five ingredients: alcohol, sugar, lemon, water, and spices (or tea). Long before “cocktail” entered the language, it was ladled from a communal bowl and shared.
Everyone eats
That mess-hall spirit runs through everything, right down to the Munkey Meal — a hot meal served nightly to anyone in need, which our guests keep going by sponsoring a plate for just $7.