The ‘no butter chicken’ Indian menu has arrived in NYC

The Indian food scene in New York City is clearly having a moment, which is to say that it is anything but basic. Regional cuisines and hyperlocal flavours are elevating palettes, replacing aloo gobi, butter chickens and dare we say curries, with experimental gastronomy and thought-provoking dishes. Thanks to restaurants with Indian-origin chefs like Bungalow, Semma and SONA, the landscape is evolving. And newest on the block, just in time for Diwali weekend, is Passerine, which opened doors to New Yorkers on November 1. Occupying the former SONA space (the buzzy restaurant Maneesh K. Goyal opened with Priyanka Chopra Jonas in 2021 and shuttered this summer) Goyal teams up with his best friend Alvina Patel Buxani, a former fashion executive and entrepreneur, for another culinary journey in Indian fare.

“We don’t want to be Bollywood Indian or ethnic Indian,” explains Goyal about how he plans to do things differently. “We want to capture the sophistication and energy of contemporary India through the New York lens,” he adds about his space in the Flatiron District. The fact that Passerine is named after a class of birds, many of which are migratory, is a worthy metaphor for multiculturality. “Often, Indian restaurants transport you to India, but at Passerine, we want you to stay in New York, and experience food and beverages that are decidedly Indian,” adds Patel Buxani, who previously headed communications at Farfetch and Christian Louboutin.

As we walk through the plush interiors of the dinner spot (think tan leather, warm woody tones and luscious hints of green), we witness a clever interplay of subtle references to the restaurant’s namesake—on the feather-printed upholstery, on the botanical-themed wallpaper, and, most prominently, on the cocktail menu. Here, there’s Green Magpie (rum infused with saffron, cilantro, and green cardamon) and Singing Lark (rum, spiced pear, peach, and chilli).

Much like the itinerant passerines, the menu here shifts with the seasons. Created by chef Chetan Shetty, who previously worked at the Michelin-starred Rania in Washington DC and Indian Accent in New York, the fare blends local produce, sourced from the neighbouring Union Square Greenmarket, with hand-ground spices flown in from Pune by Shetty’s Mangalorean mom. Most notable is the vadagam blend, which is made specially for their aged sea bass. “I want to use the best ingredients around me and make them Indian in a way that really makes sense,” says Shetty, who also taps into homegrown favourites for inspiration.

The crunchiness of the murukkus that his mother fried up every Diwali resurfaces in an amuse-bouche topped with avocado, hibiscus chutney, chilli dust, and smoked trout roe that can be best described as...a chef’s kiss. Then there’s the chicken saagwala, based on a dish his father would serve at the college canteen he managed, although Shetty’s version is far more meticulous, pan-fried with its skin before being plated on a heat-y spinach sauce with cinnamon and star anise. But the crowd-pleaser of the season is the slow-roasted cabbage, in which the cone-shaped caraflex is doused in a traditional South Indian coriander and coconut gassi sauce, typically used for chicken or fish. “This gassi is very coriander seed-forward and light on the coconut base. That way, the taste of the butter-roasted cabbage feels very clear,” he says of his unusual pairing.

The chef, for his part, is most proud of his labour-intensive lamb dishes: there’s a dry aged lamb loin, aged for two weeks in-house; and a Kolhapuri lamb tartare infused with an authentically Puneri masala of sun-dried onion, garlic, and chilli. It’s this sort of experimentation that keeps the menu interesting—a dash of smoke oil here, or a bit of dashi there, “so subtle you can’t put your finger on it”, reveals new flavours with every bite. Even his Big Apple gulab jamun comes with an unexpected twist, paired with a green apple frozen yoghurt. “The gulab jamun from Chitale is nostalgic for me,” reflects Shetty. “But here, I wanted to make something less dense and more spongy like a brioche. I also replaced the cardamon base with coriander syrup for a floral flavour profile.”

It would be wrong to visit Passerine and not order the ice cream sandwich for dessert. The nostalgic classic is reimagined with cocoa husk tea, cocoa nibs, and cocoa powder, delicately wrapped in brown paper sealed with an Indian postage stamp of the Indian pitta, a passerine bird native to the region. The vintage stamp feels sentimental and is a great final flourish to a meal that transcends borders, traditions, even notions of what food can be. It’s a reminder that just like the restaurant’s borderless mascot, the space itself blurs boundaries and embraces the cultural confluences for the ultimate dining experience.