Chicken Tikka Masala in New York
A restaurant’s guide to its competitors, which is exactly as suspect as it sounds
We sell chicken tikka masala. Read the following accordingly.
A restaurant writing a guide to its competitors is a conflict of interest with a byline, and pretending otherwise would insult everybody involved. So: this is a list of places we genuinely like, written by people who would rather you ate at ours. Every entry below is somewhere Arun has actually sat down and eaten — no aggregator scraping, no places we have only read about, and no reciprocal arrangements of any kind.
What follows is a personal account, not a ranking. New York has more good Indian food than any single list can hold, and the omissions are omissions rather than verdicts.
Five places, one line of Arun’s on each. The brevity is his.
Junoon
Classic flavour, and Arun’s point is that an established Michelin star winner is expected to deliver exactly that. It is a compliment with the shrug built in. In 2013, when we opened, he counted Junoon among the few rooms in New York where you could get good Indian food. It is still on his list.
Bungalow
Tasty and rich, in a beautiful setting. That is Arun’s whole note, and both halves of it are compliments. Of the five, it is the one he stops to praise the room for.
INDN
Traditional, and heavy: Arun’s reading of the cooking. On the room he says loud and club-like, which is the sort of thing that settles the question of whether it is your evening before the food arrives.
Dhamaka
Excellent flavour, fun energy. Arun’s note runs to four words and all four are good, which does not happen often on a list written by somebody who sells the same dish.
Masala Times
Excellent, flavourful chicken tikka masala over a counter. It is a quick-service place, affordable, and Arun rates it for students, which on this list is a category of its own rather than a consolation.
And then there is ours, which is the reason you are reading a restaurant’s guide to other restaurants.
We do not serve a chicken tikka masala. We serve a Butter Chicken Tikka Masala, which is the same argument this journal has already had at length: tandoor-fired chicken tikka, a properly spiced tikka-masala base that has been reducing since the afternoon, and butter folded in at the end, off the heat. Six hours, most days.
That is the whole case. If what you want is chicken tikka masala inside twenty minutes, we are not the place and the counter above is. If you want the one that tastes of an afternoon’s patience, come to 338 East 92nd Street and order the dish with the long name. We have called it arguably the best chicken tikka masala in the city for years now, and the five places above are how you check.