Chicken Tikka Masala in New York
My guide to my competitors, which is exactly as suspect as it sounds
Five places in New York I would send you for chicken tikka masala, picked by a man who sells his own. Read what follows accordingly.
Ours is not a chicken tikka masala. Ours is a Butter Chicken Tikka Masala, and anyone who wants the difference between butter chicken and chicken tikka masala set out properly will find it elsewhere in this journal. The short version, for the purposes of this list: to an Indian from New Delhi, which I am, ours tastes like a lighter butter chicken. To our friends from Great Britain, it tastes like a refined chicken tikka masala.
Chicken tikka masala is a spectrum rather than a fixed recipe, and the five places below sit at different points along it. Some of them put a different name on the menu for it. The dish moves around, and the name moves with it.
A restaurant writing a guide to its competitors is a conflict of interest with a byline, and pretending otherwise would insult everybody involved. So: these are places I genuinely like, listed by a man who would rather you ate at mine. I have sat down and eaten at every one of them. No aggregator scraping, no places I have only read about, and no reciprocal arrangements of any kind.
This 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 from me on each. The brevity is deliberate.
Junoon
Classic flavour, which is what I expect an established Michelin star winner to deliver. Take it as a compliment with the shrug built in. In 2013, when we opened, Junoon was one of the few rooms in New York where you could get good Indian food. It is still on my list.
Bungalow
Tasty and rich, in a beautiful setting. That is my whole note, and both halves of it are meant well. Of the five, it is the one where I stop to praise the room.
INDN
Traditional, and heavy: that is my reading of the cooking. The room is loud and club-like, which settles the question of whether it is your sort of evening before the food arrives.
Dhamaka
Excellent flavour, fun energy. My 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 I rate it for students, which on this list is a category of its own rather than a consolation.
Maps © OpenStreetMap contributors.
And then there is ours, which is the reason you are reading my guide to other people’s restaurants.
I said at the top that ours is a Butter Chicken Tikka Masala rather than a 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.