Founder of Michelin-Starred Junoon Gets Into Fast-Casual Bowl Game

The Brooklyn lunch crowd will soon have yet another place to get bowls. Next month, Rajesh Bhardwaj — the founder and CEO of the Michelin-starred Indian tasting menu restaurant Junoon — is opening Bowl & Blade, a fast-casual spot in Park Slope dedicated to made-to-order bowls.

The small space, located at 169 Fifth Ave., near Lincoln Place, will have eight seats inside and an outdoor bench. Chef and partner Adin Langille, who’s previously worked at Junoon, created a menu that follows the usual customizable bowl formula with choices of base, protein, and vegetables.

Bowl & Blade pulls from several different cuisines, including Korean, Peruvian, Greek, and Hawaiian, so options range from poke to Korean barbecue. As with most fast-casual ventures in this vein, there will be signature bowl options, too, like the “East Medi” bowl made with olives, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, red onion, chickpeas, and a cumin tahini sauce. There’s also a dessert menu of frozen yogurt and acai bowls.

With Mediterranean, poke, and Korean barbecue bowl options, Bowl & Blade seems to be trying to cash in on several fast-casual trends at once, like the result of some sort of NYC lunch algorithm. Mediterranean fast-casual is certainly having its moment. And even though the poke boom of 2016 has calmed down a bit, new poke spots continue to emerge and expand throughout the city, including some that have acclaimed chefs attached.

Bowl & Blade opens for lunch and dinner on April 1 and will be open every day from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.