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A dosa with condiments on a plate. — The dosa from Lore in Brooklyn.

18 Stellar Indian Restaurants in NYC

A citywide selection of outstanding Indian restaurants serving the subcontinent’s diverse cuisine

by Robert Sietsema Updated Jul 20, 2023, 1:16pm EDT

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The dosa from Lore in Brooklyn.

by Robert Sietsema Updated Jul 20, 2023, 1:16pm EDT

Indian restaurants in New York City go back over a century, and Times Square was an early hotspot. Perhaps the most famous was the paradoxically named Taj Mahal Hindu Indian Restaurant, founded in 1918 at 242 West 42nd Street, when many South Asian students, businesspeople, dock workers, and sailors lived in nearby boarding houses. The New York Times mentioned it glowingly.

Midtown remained the main repository of Indian restaurants, as curries migrated onto the menus of more effete restaurants and hotels. By the 1970s, there were many steam table establishments serving Punjabi fare in various parts of the city, ladling rice and curries into compartmentalized plates and slinging tandoori items that competed with our earliest barbecue joints when it came to smoky flavors.

Then along came campuses of Indian restaurants in places like Jackson Heights, Murray Hill, Jersey City, Utopia Parkway, and Edison, New Jersey, with sit-down restaurants offering specialties of several regions. Eventually, we had restaurants dedicated to individual dishes like biryani and dosas, the food of a single city or region, and Mumbai and Kolkata street snacks. Finally, a new variety of luxury establishment appeared, offering more creative and nuanced takes on classic dishes as well as some invented ones, along with strong cocktails, attracting a whole new generation of diners.

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Doaba Deli

Looking for truck stop fare? This worn but loved, double storefront deli is named after a region of Punjab, and was opened by Inderjit Singh over a decade ago. The steam table displays all that’s available that day, with a preponderance of vegetarian dishes, though chicken and the occasional goat or lamb curry are also available. Add tandoori chicken to the menu and you have a beguiling number of choices — but not too many.

945 Columbus Ave, New York, NY 10025

A white tray with four vegetarian dishes in shades of green and reddish brown with a bowl of rice on the side. — Here’s your lunch! from Doaba Deli.

Also featured in:

22 Restaurants That Show Off the Upper West Side

Baazi

Upper West Side old-timer Awadh was transformed by Gaurav Anand and Aarthi Sampath into Baazi. The two-story, bright-blue space changed its menu, too, emphasizing hard-to-find regional recipes from North and South, as well as Goa — including chicken cafreal, a cornish hen flavored with mint and cilantro. Many dishes have modern flourishes, including chicken sirka pyaaz in a sauce of vinegar-pickled onions, and paneer ke sholey, fresh cheese stuffed with raisins, arriving aflame over a brazier.

Open in Google Maps

2588 Broadway, New York, NY 10025

Visit Website

Thick slices of fresh cheese coated with gravy and with flames licking out underneath. — Stuffed and grilled paneer at Baazi.

Also featured in:

10 Sit-Down Restaurants for Celebrating Diwali With Family and Friends

Jaz Indian Cuisine

British Indian immigrant Jaz Rupall founded this Hell’s Kitchen restaurant focusing on northern Indian cooking with a Balti twist (a style of Indian cooking popular in the UK). On the menu find a chicken shahi korma in cashew and almond sauce, mango shrimp grilled in the tandoor, and — showing the influence of Silk Road food on northern India — skewers of lamb shashlik rubbed with spices.

813 9th Ave, New York, NY 10019

Visit Website

Three oblong dishes with gravied meats in various shades of brown, red, and yellow. — All that Jaz.

Also featured in:

Hyderabadi Zaiqa

The newly opened walk-down space specializes in Hyderabadi fare, with biryanis being the principal focus. But other southern Indian specialties abound, including a bang-up version of Chettinad chicken and a Malabar shrimp curry with plenty of coconut milk.

Open in Google Maps

366 W 52nd St, New York, NY 10019

Visit Website

A rice dish dotted with meat and two curries in shades of yellowish brown. — Goat dum biryani and two curries.

Also featured in:

Where to Find Great Food in Hell’s Kitchen

Temple Canteen

Founded in 1993 and located in the basement of Flushing’s Ganesh temple, this place serves a strictly vegetarian menu of South Indian dishes, running to multiple varieties of dosa, plus uttapam with a choice of batter inclusions, and idly in several formats. There are vegetable curries and rice casseroles, too, in a family-friendly setting. Remove your shoes to visit the Hindu temple upstairs, where all are welcome.

09 Holly Ave No 143, Queens, NY 11355

Visit Website

The monster paper dosa at Temple Canteen is enough for two — The immense paper dosa, with chutneys and sambar.

Also featured in:

Angel Indian

Angel Indian offers a full complement of vegetarian and non-vegetarian dishes, mainly from northern India. Its pastry topped dum biryani is available with goat or vegetables, both equally good. Anything incorporating the restaurant’s homemade paneer is also recommended.

Open in Google Maps

7414 37th Rd, Queens, NY 11372

Visit Website

A ring of small cracker globes surrounds a pair of condiments, one thick like ketchup, the other in a small pitcher... — Pani puri makes a great participatory app at Angel.

Also featured in:

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Bombay Sandwich Co.

This fun-loving spot boasts a narrow kitchen and dining room that opens out into a wonderful apartment building courtyard. The snacks and meals are all Mumbai style, including an aloo grilled cheese featuring chunks of masala potato and oozing white cheese, and an exemplary veggie burger bursting with savory spices. Strictly vegetarian.

48 W 27th St, New York, NY 10001

Visit Website

A toasted cheese on bread with oozing cheese and yellow potatoes. — Behold the masala toasted cheese sandwich.

Cardamom

Located on a side street in Sunnyside, this charming spot specializes in the food of Goa, which has its own distinct cuisine that sometimes features ingredients like red wine and pork. But the menu via chef Alwyn Gudhino is more geographically broad-ranging than that, so don’t despair of seeing some of your pan-national Indian favorites on the bill of fare.

Open in Google Maps

43-45 43rd street, Queens Blvd, Queens, NY 11104

Visit Website

Two bowls of curry, one brown and one yellow, the yellow one with shrimp in it. — Goat xacutti and shrimp caldin at Cardamom.

Also featured in:

New York’s 2022 Michelin Bib Gourmand Restaurants, Mapped

Vatan

A single multi-course, all-you-can-eat, vegetarian (and kosher) Gujarati meal is the focus of Vatan, a Murray Hill fixture for decades owned by Prashant Shah. To make the meal more enjoyable, the entire premises is made to look like an Indian Village, where seating can be had inside a small building, on a balcony, or beneath a spreading banyan tree. Pace yourself, so as to have an appetite when you reach the dessert of thickened yogurt flavored with saffron called shrikhand.

409 3rd Ave, New York, NY 10016

Visit Website

A small structure, a balcony, and a tree are all part of the landscape inside the restaurant. — Eat in an Indian village at Vatan.

Also featured in:

Where to Find the Best Regional Indian Cooking in NY and NJ

Sahib

Sahib travels all over northern India to collect recipes — there are four kinds of bone-in goat curry alone, including one from Kashmir and another from Kolkata — which is a good measure of the seriousness of an Indian restaurant. This is one of a handful of Hemant Mathur restaurants in Manhattan, and the vegetarian dishes here keep pace with the meat-bearing ones, including paneer kali murch in a creamy black pepper sauce, and achari bindi: okra in a sauce flavored with Indian pickles.

104 Lexington Ave, New York, NY 10016

Visit Website

Four dishes in various shades in pans with handles. — An assortment of dishes from Curry Hill’s Sahib.

Also featured in:

Saravanaa Bhavan

This massive international restaurant chain founded in 1981 by P. Rajagopal now boasts a pair of branches in Manhattan, the other on the Upper West Side. The menu focuses on the strictly vegetarian dishes of South India, and goes way further than the usual dosas and idlys. Examples are adai aviyal, a Keralan dish that features multiple vegetables in a sauce of yogurt and coconut milk, accompanied by a pair of red flatbreads; and bisibelabath, a veggie-studded rice casserole from Karnataka.

81 Lexington Ave, New York, NY 10016

Visit Website

A metal tray with compartments containing a white vegetable curry and two red flatbreads. — Adai aviyal.

Also featured in:

GupShup

Meaning something like “idle talk,” GupShup took the Flatiron by storm when it first appeared late in 2018, slinging opulent dishes in elaborate platings, along with strong cocktails and a decor at turns playful and garish. Like other places intent on delivering Indian food into the realm of fine dining, it tweaked flavors in stylish offerings, sometimes with international references, like smoked salmon puchkas and jackfruit tacos, sometimes featuring regional specialties like a Kerala beef fry.

115 E 18th St, New York, NY 10003

Visit Website

A stuffed bone marrow in the foreground with flatbreads in the background. — Roasted bone marrow with five-spice naan.

Also featured in:

Semma

The southern Indian states of Kerala, Karnataka, Goa, Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu — where chef Vijay Kumar is from — are the focus of the menu at Semma, a really wonderful West Village restaurant from the team of Roni Mazumdar and Chintan Pandya. There’s much emphasis on cooking as it’s done at home, with dishes like goat intestines flavored with curry leaf; and Mangalore huukkosu — cauliflower fritters served with fresh coconut chutney. And the gunpowder dosa is one of the best in town.

60 Greenwich Ave, New York, NY 10011

Visit Website

A lobster tail sits in a thick gravy on top of its own removed shell. — A lobster tail sits atop valiya chemmeen moilee.

Also featured in:

Mithaas

Mithaas is something of an anchor of Jersey City’s India Square: Smack dab in the middle, it has a large dining room that serves a broad range of South Indian vegetarian specialties, including all-in meals on round metal trays called thalis, sometimes as specials associated with particular states or cities. It also offers eye-appealing sweets — halwas, barfis, and such — in pastel shades sometimes decorated with edible silver foil. Easily accessible on the PATH train.

Open in Google Maps

795 Newark Ave, Jersey City, NJ 07306

Visit Website

The special thali at Mithaas comes on a metal tray — A Mithaas thali includes apps and sweets.

Also featured in:

Kuttanadan Indian Restaurant

Opening during the pandemic, Kuttanadan specializes in the cooking of the far-southwestern state of Kerala, making it nearly unique in the city (actually, it’s right on the border of Long Island and Queens). Perfectly grilled sardines and other seafood make up much of the menu, but perhaps more surprising are dishes featuring pork and beef — the latter found in beef devil, a dish that features brisket and the black peppercorns from a region sometimes called the Malabar Coast.

248-54 Jericho Turnpike, Floral Park, NY 11001

A plastic container filled with beef and black pepper. — Beef devil at Kuttanadan.

Also featured in:

Where to Find the Best Regional Indian Cooking in NY and NJ

Masti

Tucked away in a corner of Williamsburg near the Williamsburg Bridge, Masti is a restaurant that specializes in Anglo-Indian Balti cooking, while also offering lots of northern and southern Indian fare, including a dish or two from West Bengal. Kosha mangsho is a mustard-laced goat curry from Kolkata, while the Bricklane curry, like the name suggests, is a London-style dish with a choice of main ingredients and an adjustable level of heat.

Open in Google Maps

184 Havemeyer St, Brooklyn, NY 11211

Visit Website

An oblong white bowl bobbing with orange squash in a reddish-orange sauce flecked with spices. — Pumpkin paanch pooran at Masti.

Also featured in:

10 Sit-Down Restaurants for Celebrating Diwali With Family and Friends

Indika House

Located in a corner of Bushwick beneath the clattering elevated tracks, Indika House is decorated with colorful floor-to-ceiling murals of flowers, elephants, the Taj Mahal, and other Indian landmarks. The menu is broad, from commonplace dishes like butter chicken and lamb curry, to rarer regional viands like chicken gassi, a recipe from Mangalore laced with coconut milk and tamarind, making for a haunting sweetness.

943 Broadway, Brooklyn, NY 11206

A chicken curry in a metal bowl with a yellowish cast. — Chicken gassi at Indika House.

Also featured in:

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Lore

Jay Kumar, who grew up in Mangaluru, is the chef at this Park Slope sleeper, where he has artfully melded Indian flavors with European influences, perhaps as a result of 20 years living in Switzerland. The long crisp dosa contains extra masala potato filling, while the samosa and chapli kebab have been reconfigured. Among your main course choices are a spice-rubbed sea bream and as good a version of fish and chips as you’re likely to find outside the UK.

Open in Google Maps

441 7th Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11215

Visit Website

A burger patty in the middles of a splotch of yogurt. — The lamb chapli kebab at Lore.

Also featured in:

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Doaba Deli

945 Columbus Ave, New York, NY 10025

Looking for truck stop fare? This worn but loved, double storefront deli is named after a region of Punjab, and was opened by Inderjit Singh over a decade ago. The steam table displays all that’s available that day, with a preponderance of vegetarian dishes, though chicken and the occasional goat or lamb curry are also available. Add tandoori chicken to the menu and you have a beguiling number of choices — but not too many.

945 Columbus Ave, New York, NY 10025

A white tray with four vegetarian dishes in shades of green and reddish brown with a bowl of rice on the side. — Here’s your lunch! from Doaba Deli.

Baazi

2588 Broadway, New York, NY 10025

Upper West Side old-timer Awadh was transformed by Gaurav Anand and Aarthi Sampath into Baazi. The two-story, bright-blue space changed its menu, too, emphasizing hard-to-find regional recipes from North and South, as well as Goa — including chicken cafreal, a cornish hen flavored with mint and cilantro. Many dishes have modern flourishes, including chicken sirka pyaaz in a sauce of vinegar-pickled onions, and paneer ke sholey, fresh cheese stuffed with raisins, arriving aflame over a brazier.

Open in Google Maps

2588 Broadway, New York, NY 10025

Visit Website

Thick slices of fresh cheese coated with gravy and with flames licking out underneath. — Stuffed and grilled paneer at Baazi.

Jaz Indian Cuisine

813 9th Ave, New York, NY 10019

British Indian immigrant Jaz Rupall founded this Hell’s Kitchen restaurant focusing on northern Indian cooking with a Balti twist (a style of Indian cooking popular in the UK). On the menu find a chicken shahi korma in cashew and almond sauce, mango shrimp grilled in the tandoor, and — showing the influence of Silk Road food on northern India — skewers of lamb shashlik rubbed with spices.

813 9th Ave, New York, NY 10019

Visit Website

Three oblong dishes with gravied meats in various shades of brown, red, and yellow. — All that Jaz.

Hyderabadi Zaiqa

366 W 52nd St, New York, NY 10019

The newly opened walk-down space specializes in Hyderabadi fare, with biryanis being the principal focus. But other southern Indian specialties abound, including a bang-up version of Chettinad chicken and a Malabar shrimp curry with plenty of coconut milk.

Open in Google Maps

366 W 52nd St, New York, NY 10019

Visit Website

A rice dish dotted with meat and two curries in shades of yellowish brown. — Goat dum biryani and two curries.

Temple Canteen

09 Holly Ave No 143, Queens, NY 11355

Founded in 1993 and located in the basement of Flushing’s Ganesh temple, this place serves a strictly vegetarian menu of South Indian dishes, running to multiple varieties of dosa, plus uttapam with a choice of batter inclusions, and idly in several formats. There are vegetable curries and rice casseroles, too, in a family-friendly setting. Remove your shoes to visit the Hindu temple upstairs, where all are welcome.

09 Holly Ave No 143, Queens, NY 11355

Visit Website

The monster paper dosa at Temple Canteen is enough for two — The immense paper dosa, with chutneys and sambar.

Angel Indian

7414 37th Rd, Queens, NY 11372

Angel Indian offers a full complement of vegetarian and non-vegetarian dishes, mainly from northern India. Its pastry topped dum biryani is available with goat or vegetables, both equally good. Anything incorporating the restaurant’s homemade paneer is also recommended.

Open in Google Maps

7414 37th Rd, Queens, NY 11372

Visit Website

A ring of small cracker globes surrounds a pair of condiments, one thick like ketchup, the other in a small pitcher... — Pani puri makes a great participatory app at Angel.

Bombay Sandwich Co.

48 W 27th St, New York, NY 10001

This fun-loving spot boasts a narrow kitchen and dining room that opens out into a wonderful apartment building courtyard. The snacks and meals are all Mumbai style, including an aloo grilled cheese featuring chunks of masala potato and oozing white cheese, and an exemplary veggie burger bursting with savory spices. Strictly vegetarian.

48 W 27th St, New York, NY 10001

Visit Website

A toasted cheese on bread with oozing cheese and yellow potatoes. — Behold the masala toasted cheese sandwich.

Cardamom

43-45 43rd street, Queens Blvd, Queens, NY 11104

Located on a side street in Sunnyside, this charming spot specializes in the food of Goa, which has its own distinct cuisine that sometimes features ingredients like red wine and pork. But the menu via chef Alwyn Gudhino is more geographically broad-ranging than that, so don’t despair of seeing some of your pan-national Indian favorites on the bill of fare.

Open in Google Maps

43-45 43rd street, Queens Blvd, Queens, NY 11104

Visit Website

Two bowls of curry, one brown and one yellow, the yellow one with shrimp in it. — Goat xacutti and shrimp caldin at Cardamom.

Vatan

409 3rd Ave, New York, NY 10016

A single multi-course, all-you-can-eat, vegetarian (and kosher) Gujarati meal is the focus of Vatan, a Murray Hill fixture for decades owned by Prashant Shah. To make the meal more enjoyable, the entire premises is made to look like an Indian Village, where seating can be had inside a small building, on a balcony, or beneath a spreading banyan tree. Pace yourself, so as to have an appetite when you reach the dessert of thickened yogurt flavored with saffron called shrikhand.

409 3rd Ave, New York, NY 10016

Visit Website

A small structure, a balcony, and a tree are all part of the landscape inside the restaurant. — Eat in an Indian village at Vatan.

Sahib

104 Lexington Ave, New York, NY 10016

Sahib travels all over northern India to collect recipes — there are four kinds of bone-in goat curry alone, including one from Kashmir and another from Kolkata — which is a good measure of the seriousness of an Indian restaurant. This is one of a handful of Hemant Mathur restaurants in Manhattan, and the vegetarian dishes here keep pace with the meat-bearing ones, including paneer kali murch in a creamy black pepper sauce, and achari bindi: okra in a sauce flavored with Indian pickles.

104 Lexington Ave, New York, NY 10016

Visit Website

Four dishes in various shades in pans with handles. — An assortment of dishes from Curry Hill’s Sahib.

Saravanaa Bhavan

81 Lexington Ave, New York, NY 10016

This massive international restaurant chain founded in 1981 by P. Rajagopal now boasts a pair of branches in Manhattan, the other on the Upper West Side. The menu focuses on the strictly vegetarian dishes of South India, and goes way further than the usual dosas and idlys. Examples are adai aviyal, a Keralan dish that features multiple vegetables in a sauce of yogurt and coconut milk, accompanied by a pair of red flatbreads; and bisibelabath, a veggie-studded rice casserole from Karnataka.

81 Lexington Ave, New York, NY 10016

Visit Website

A metal tray with compartments containing a white vegetable curry and two red flatbreads. — Adai aviyal.

GupShup

115 E 18th St, New York, NY 10003

Meaning something like “idle talk,” GupShup took the Flatiron by storm when it first appeared late in 2018, slinging opulent dishes in elaborate platings, along with strong cocktails and a decor at turns playful and garish. Like other places intent on delivering Indian food into the realm of fine dining, it tweaked flavors in stylish offerings, sometimes with international references, like smoked salmon puchkas and jackfruit tacos, sometimes featuring regional specialties like a Kerala beef fry.

115 E 18th St, New York, NY 10003

Visit Website

A stuffed bone marrow in the foreground with flatbreads in the background. — Roasted bone marrow with five-spice naan.

Semma

60 Greenwich Ave, New York, NY 10011

The southern Indian states of Kerala, Karnataka, Goa, Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu — where chef Vijay Kumar is from — are the focus of the menu at Semma, a really wonderful West Village restaurant from the team of Roni Mazumdar and Chintan Pandya. There’s much emphasis on cooking as it’s done at home, with dishes like goat intestines flavored with curry leaf; and Mangalore huukkosu — cauliflower fritters served with fresh coconut chutney. And the gunpowder dosa is one of the best in town.

60 Greenwich Ave, New York, NY 10011

Visit Website

A lobster tail sits in a thick gravy on top of its own removed shell. — A lobster tail sits atop valiya chemmeen moilee.

Mithaas

795 Newark Ave, Jersey City, NJ 07306

Mithaas is something of an anchor of Jersey City’s India Square: Smack dab in the middle, it has a large dining room that serves a broad range of South Indian vegetarian specialties, including all-in meals on round metal trays called thalis, sometimes as specials associated with particular states or cities. It also offers eye-appealing sweets — halwas, barfis, and such — in pastel shades sometimes decorated with edible silver foil. Easily accessible on the PATH train.

Open in Google Maps

795 Newark Ave, Jersey City, NJ 07306

Visit Website

The special thali at Mithaas comes on a metal tray — A Mithaas thali includes apps and sweets.

Kuttanadan Indian Restaurant

248-54 Jericho Turnpike, Floral Park, NY 11001

Opening during the pandemic, Kuttanadan specializes in the cooking of the far-southwestern state of Kerala, making it nearly unique in the city (actually, it’s right on the border of Long Island and Queens). Perfectly grilled sardines and other seafood make up much of the menu, but perhaps more surprising are dishes featuring pork and beef — the latter found in beef devil, a dish that features brisket and the black peppercorns from a region sometimes called the Malabar Coast.

248-54 Jericho Turnpike, Floral Park, NY 11001

A plastic container filled with beef and black pepper. — Beef devil at Kuttanadan.

Related Maps

Masti

184 Havemeyer St, Brooklyn, NY 11211

Tucked away in a corner of Williamsburg near the Williamsburg Bridge, Masti is a restaurant that specializes in Anglo-Indian Balti cooking, while also offering lots of northern and southern Indian fare, including a dish or two from West Bengal. Kosha mangsho is a mustard-laced goat curry from Kolkata, while the Bricklane curry, like the name suggests, is a London-style dish with a choice of main ingredients and an adjustable level of heat.

Open in Google Maps

184 Havemeyer St, Brooklyn, NY 11211

Visit Website

An oblong white bowl bobbing with orange squash in a reddish-orange sauce flecked with spices. — Pumpkin paanch pooran at Masti.

Indika House

943 Broadway, Brooklyn, NY 11206

Located in a corner of Bushwick beneath the clattering elevated tracks, Indika House is decorated with colorful floor-to-ceiling murals of flowers, elephants, the Taj Mahal, and other Indian landmarks. The menu is broad, from commonplace dishes like butter chicken and lamb curry, to rarer regional viands like chicken gassi, a recipe from Mangalore laced with coconut milk and tamarind, making for a haunting sweetness.

943 Broadway, Brooklyn, NY 11206

A chicken curry in a metal bowl with a yellowish cast. — Chicken gassi at Indika House.

Lore

441 7th Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11215

Jay Kumar, who grew up in Mangaluru, is the chef at this Park Slope sleeper, where he has artfully melded Indian flavors with European influences, perhaps as a result of 20 years living in Switzerland. The long crisp dosa contains extra masala potato filling, while the samosa and chapli kebab have been reconfigured. Among your main course choices are a spice-rubbed sea bream and as good a version of fish and chips as you’re likely to find outside the UK.

Open in Google Maps

441 7th Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11215

Visit Website

A burger patty in the middles of a splotch of yogurt. — The lamb chapli kebab at Lore.

Related Maps