Located directly across the street from the ornate entrance gates of City University, this newer and flashier cousin of Fort George old timer Kismat (founded 1981) has been around seven years. Under chef Anil Ahmed, the menu explores regional cuisines, as well as Americanized manifestations of classic Indian dishes. In the former category is sahina, fritters of taro leaves also popular in Trinidad. There’s even a hamburger on the menu.

Looking for truck stop fare? This worn-down, but much 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.

Upper West Side old-timer Awadh was transformed by Gaurav Anand and Aarthi Sampath into Baazi. The two-story, bright-blue space changed up 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.

Located in Le Parker Meridien Hotel, this luxurious restaurant is a branch of an original in New Delhi, and when it arrived in 2016, it brought a renewed sense of excitement for Indian cuisine in a fine-dining setting — which doesn’t mean it wasn’t any fun. Sometimes using local ingredients like pastrami, the place filled its menu with small and surprising dishes that deployed things like foie gras and black truffles. The dishes are often named as strings of ingredients (for example: “pork dumplings, broth, nettle oil, crispy black rice”), making them easier to order.

This modest spot near Penn Station, named after the fourth largest city in India’s Punjab state and owned by I. Srinivas Gangula, delivers affordable and magnificent meals that consist of a main course, a couple of sides, bread, and rice — more than the average diner can eat. The chicken tikka masala is especially good, swimming in enough creamy sauce to drench both rice and bread. Snacks available, too, from a limited menu that changes daily.

This Long Island City canteen from Roni Mazumdar and Chintan Pandya channels the food of Mumbai, West Bengal, and other northern locales — as it’s prepared in home settings. When the place, wallpapered with newsprint, appeared nearly four years ago it caused a sensation, not only through the pungency of its freshly ground spices but the novelty of many dishes. The pastry-topped Lucknowi biryani alone should be enough to induce any diner to go. The space will become more takeout focused as Mazumdar and Pandya find another spot to expand Adda.

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 broad-ranging than that, so don’t despair of seeing some of your pan-national Indian favorites on the bill of fare.

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 is 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.

This massive international restaurant chain founded in 1981 by P. Rajagopal now boasts a pair of branches in Manhattan (the other is 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.

This spot near the eastern border of Queens founded in 2014 in an area dotted with Indian restaurants specializes in the vegetarian recipes of South India. Included are idly in multiple guises, rava and masala dosas, uttapams, and the savory doughnuts called vadai. Plenty of snacks available, if you just want to dash in for a small bite in the airy and extensively windowed space. And yes that is ketchup in the condiment slot on the tray.

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

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 cases of eye-appealing sweets — halwas, barfis, and such — in pastel shades sometimes decorated with edible silver foil. Easily accessible on the PATH train.

This fast-casual just off the NYU campus is lots of fun as a lunch or dinner option. Pick one of three main ingredients — paneer, chicken, or Indian falafel — and then select a series of bases, sauces, and sides to go with it (multiple sauces can be chosen). The result can be highly spiced or bland, vegetarian or not, but there seem to be no missteps among the complex combinations that can be assembled.

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 native to this region, once known as the Malabar Coast.

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. The team behind the food is wife and husband Linda Mahkovec and Ruhel Amin, along with executive chef Abdul Jabber.

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 ranging, 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.

Helmed by chef Eric McCarthy, who was born in Goa, Indian Table is a sleek and recently revamped restaurant that specializes in the fare of the small seaside state, though the menu is far more broad-ranging. Of the Goan dishes, a transformed version of Portuguese caldo verde and a shrimp curry laced with cumin and tart purple mangosteen stand out. Goat biryani is rendered in Lucknow fashion with a crust on the top sealing in its flavors — it’s a must order.