The chile-pepper string lights of First Avenue, two tales’ value of them, have lengthy been the beacon of the East Village’s Indian-food hall, the compact shorthand to generations of New Yorkers for the entire variegated sub-continental delicacies. (When a buddy of mine first moved to city, he frequented a restaurant he solely ever knew as “Chile Pepper.”) It’s no large slight to those eating places to say that within the years since they first appeared, the Indian-food scene has expanded dramatically in selection and high quality, and now we’re having fun with a masala increase. Jazba, Kanyakumari, Passerine, and Chatti have all opened previously couple of years. Our Assam runneth over.
On the forefront of this cost is Unapologetic Meals, the restaurant group that opened Adda Indian Canteen in Lengthy Island Metropolis in 2018. In probably the most numerous and most Indian borough, Adda was low-cost and cheerful however no much less bold or uncompromising for that. The ecstatic reception of Adda led to the opening of Dhamaka in 2021 and, later that 12 months, Semma, with a method nearer to high-quality eating. Like Junoon earlier than them, the place Unapologetic’s government chef, Chintan Pandya, as soon as cooked, these eating places yanked Indian meals to echelons, and neighborhoods, the place it had typically been unfairly neglected. Now they appear as Manhattan as any of their neighbors. On a current Friday night time, waits at Semma had been hours lengthy; I noticed Google CEO Sundar Pichai and the good comedian actress Poorna Jagannathan gliding to their tables.
So when Unapologetic determined this 12 months to maneuver Adda to a storefront on First Avenue — Chile Pepper Method — it felt like an announcement of function. Adda has now been reconfigured from its scrappier origins right into a recognizable sibling of Semma and Dhamaka. “Lengthy Island Metropolis was model one, however this isn’t model two,” Pandya instructed me. “It’s model eight, 9, or ten.”
What Unapologetic has managed to do is to take the teachings discovered at its blockbuster hits and apply them to its firstborn with out softening its focus. It hasn’t bowdlerized or gentrified a lot within the transfer from Queens. Pandya has at all times insisted on serving quite a lot of dishes that may cow timid diners: testicles and kidneys at Dhamaka, snails and intestines at Semma, and goat brains right here at Adda — with sufficient success that the night time I attempted to order it, it had offered out. Even then, Pandya is a chef keen to fulfill lots of his clients the place they’re. “We couldn’t go to Manhattan with out butter rooster,” he stated.
So this Adda’s calling card is a reservation-only $42-per-person Butter Rooster Expertise. Adda doesn’t stint on bells and whistles — rolling chutney carts adopted by fairly chaatwallas with cigarette-girl trays of street-food chaats (fried lotus root in the future, potato one other) — however the BCE is its maximal expression. Carried out tableside, it’s nearly extra expertise than rooster: a tin-can smoker for the hen (with a alternative of wooden chips) and a personalized sauce constructed on a cart in entrance of diners’ eyes. Butter is a non-negotiable, after all, however which butter? You’ll style three — pickled tomato, fenugreek, and smoked chile — earlier than deciding which might be melted, with but extra unaccented butter, into your sauce, plus extra to crown the completed plate. The standard cuboid hunks of breast meat are right here a halved or quartered rooster, which strikes, post-smoking, right into a tableside Le Creuset (every little thing at Adda is Le Creuset, like an influencer fantasy) to fulfill tomatoes, butter, cream, and extra honey than I wanted to learn about.
(I finished counting dipper lashings at three.) The result’s so richly creamy, so thick with butter, that my lips had been moisturized by the third chew. It’s recognizably a relation of the butter rooster of 1,000,000 Seamless orders however extra yielding and flapping dangerously near too wealthy and too candy. It’s saved by a sluggish creep of chile warmth and a blessedly earthy sidecar of dal.
Butter rooster could also be a Manhattan prerequisite, however I don’t imagine it’s the easiest way to expertise Adda. The restaurant nonetheless has to do a number of the work of luring unaccustomed diners to its wilder methods — “I feel I like this higher with my eyes closed,” admitted a buddy whereas ingesting his shochu-and-yogurt Raita cocktail — however larger rewards await them on the opposite facet. I’d run again for Adda’s baby-goat biryani (scraggly shreds of braised leg hidden among the many sweetly frizzled onions in a fluffy tower of basmati rice) or the paneer khurchan (a ruddy, brick-red stew of do-it-yourself cheese in a sprightly coriander-brightened tomato-and-pepper sauce). I’ll confess to a passion for the squeaky cheese cubes of extra workaday locations, however Adda’s paneer doesn’t a lot soften in your mouth because it scatters like a cloud. The chef de delicacies, Neel Kajale, boasts that if anybody could make a extra tender paneer than his, he’ll comp their meal. The paneer comes from the vegetarian menu, which may float its personal restaurant.
Not each dish rises to those heights. A coconut-curry stew, served with a alternative of fish — sea bass, mackerel, or the extra authentically Indian pomfret — was robust and bony. (The latter is the fish’s fault, however the former is the restaurant’s.) What ought to have been a showstopper shank of lamb, which a server hoists to standing with a skewer, the higher to understand the braised meat falling off the bone, was certainly succulent and gamy in its korma-spiced cashew sauce, nevertheless it wanted extra spice to stability its chocolaty richness.
Clockwise from prime left: Adda’s exterior, the Butter Rooster Expertise, inside, the sigdi prawn. Hugo Yu.
Clockwise from prime left: Adda’s exterior, the Butter Rooster Expertise, inside, the sigdi prawn. Hugo Yu.
These are nits, not tragedies, shortly assuaged with the swoop of a flaky fried paratha by way of any and each dish of sauce, and if something isn’t spicy or sharp sufficient, there’s at all times the prepared adulteration of 1’s chosen chutneys: “the Indian salt and pepper,” because the chutney-cart driver will remind you.
The lengthy railroad-style area is festive and vibrant with the standard Unapologetic décor — Indian-newspaper-headline wallpaper abutting prismatic partitions — and a bubbly Hindi soundtrack. Drinks are given extra precedence than on the different eating places with an extended and judiciously chosen wine record, home beers made in collaboration with Brooklyn’s Transmitter Brewing, and quite a lot of concerned themed cocktails. (I didn’t deliver myself to order the $32 trio of chutney-inspired cocktails, together with an onion-flavored one, and there’s a $36 particular to enrich the butter rooster that’s solely obtainable with the Expertise.) All of it means that regardless of Unapologetic’s vital company footprint (along with the eating places already talked about, the group runs Naks close by, the Rowdy Rooster, Masalawala & Sons in Brooklyn, and a biryani-delivery service), it hasn’t resorted to merely syndicating itself. Adda isn’t set to unseat Semma because the jewel within the firm’s crown. Given its homier ambitions, that’s doubtless by design. It’s a welcome addition in its personal proper, and a cheerful elevation of the outdated Indian hall. There’s not a chile gentle to be discovered, however may one be ripe for reclamation?
What About LIC?
Unapologetic isn’t leaving Queens. As an alternative, the unique Adda area is being become an organization testing lab and catering arm.
Simply Two Desserts
Chocolate-dipped kulfi pops are much less candy; a puddingy milk-solids cake with butterscotch ice cream is extra excessive.
Subsequent Up
Pandya says that the rejiggering of Dhamaka — now smaller, due to the closure of Essex Market — is within the offing quickly.
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In case you desire to learn in print, you too can discover this text within the July 28, 2025, difficulty of
New York Journal.
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