No More Butter Chicken: Where Indian Food Finally Gets to Be Itself

Our interim critic reviews Bungalow in the East Village, where the celebrity chef Vikas Khanna’s variations on regional dishes blaze new paths without cutting corners.

This is Priya Krishna’s first review as an interim restaurant critic, along with Melissa Clark, for The New York Times.

Are we done with the butter-chicken era of Indian restaurants? With being asked to choose a spice level from 1 to 10 for entrees? With having to hear the redundant phrase “naan bread”?

That’s what I wondered as I dunked a Parle-G biscuit into chai at Bungalow and noticed that the dining room was completely packed, the line to get in stretched down First Avenue and the bar was standing room only.

It wasn’t always this way. When I began working in food journalism 11 years ago, the hard-to-get-into restaurants in New York City were usually Italian, French or “new American.” At these places, my friends and I were often the only people of color sitting in the dining room. We grew accustomed to being forgotten around mid-meal, or being seated next to the bathrooms.

What a difference a decade makes. Some of the most coveted tables in New York today are at restaurants — like Semma and Dhamaka — serving lesser-known regional dishes from around India. Checking around last Friday, I could have landed a dinner reservation for four at coveted places like Lilia, Carbone and Torrisi in the next few weeks, but there wasn’t a single opening at Bungalow.