Chef Vikas Khanna who opened Bungalow in March 2024 in the East Village, which earned 3-stars from a New York Times restaurant review, says his eatery targets “mostly South East Asians.” Recognizing that this description sounds rather limiting, he adds, “Everyone is welcome. Our ethos is embracing every guest as a family member.”
Khanna is an acclaimed chef, known for his Indian restaurant Junoon, which debuted in 2011 and earned a Michelin star, a James Beard Award nominee and for hosting 7 seasons of “Master Chef India.”
Ironically, Priya Krishna in her first New York Times restaurant review, as one of two interim critics taking over for Pete Wells who departed after 12 years on the job, underscores Khanna’s outlook on who his restaurant is appealing to. She noted that Bungalow “is a restaurant by South Asians, for South Asians, and if others want to join us, they’re welcome, too.”
Krishna described its menu as a “lesson in regional Indian food and the creative possibilities contained within it.” It “follows the path of classical Indian cuisine while introducing guests to new dishes at the same time through familiar flavors.”
For example, dishes such as “ghee roast, a dish in which meat is typically cooked in fat until meltingly tender, is built around plantains” and likely will be unknown to most New Yorkers who aren’t from India.
MORE FOR YOU
A renowned chef is bringing classic Indian regional food to his new eatery Bungalow in the East Village and stirring things up.
Why the East Village
In fact, this refined eatery is located on 1st Avenue and 2nd Street, near busy Houston Street, in a scruffy area of the East Village, not tony Madison Avenue on the Upper East Side. And yet Khanna, who moved to the U.S. 24 years ago, has fond associations of East 6th Street, once known as “Indian row” because of its array of Indian eateries clustered on the block.
Recognizing the East Village’s history of Indian food, he says, “They were the original starting point and we are an extension of them. What better location to choose than in their shadows?”
He’s a Chef on a Mission
When this reporter interviewed Khanna by phone, what comes across are his passion and commitment to preparing this regional style of Indian food. It may be a profit-making business, but Khanna is inspired to make this food. He’s a chef/owner on a culinary mission.
He named it Bungalow, which means a big mansion in India, reminding him of his grandparent’s house, where he was treated with “great love and no judgment.”
Why did Khanna wait over a dozen years to open Bungalow, his second eatery? He says his first restaurant required a “24 by 7” commitment so there was no time to think about anything else, so about one restaurant a decade is suffice.
In fact, at age 53-years-old, he calls this his last restaurant, because he’ll be 63-years-old when the 10 years he needs to perfect it, comes to an end, and that will be enough.
Bungalow accommodates 101 people, and he acknowledges it can take a long time to snare one of those reservations. “When you’ve waited 3 months to get a spot, I want to serve you my favorite, authentic dishes from India,” he says.
He says that the 3-star New York Times review will impact children in India who now have a cuisine to look up to and emulate. “That 3-star review is a game changer for all of them,” he says.
No Third-Party Delivery for This Chef
Unlike most other Manhattan restaurants, Bungalow offers no third-party delivery of any kind. Why not? Why relinquish that additional revenue? “I want people to come to my restaurant and dine. If they see how much it takes to plate every dish, the meals would lose their power if I couldn’t pay full attention to them,” he reveals.
Despite the usual skepticism demonstrated on Yelp, several guests at Bungalow showered chef Khanna with praise. Shefali from Midtown West wrote that “Bungalow NY was a dream come true that exceeded my expectations.” She praised the yogurt kebab, said the chicken biryani was “cooked to perfection” and thought the Anarkali chicken was filled with “juicy pieces of chicken.”
Prakash from Miami Beach noted that though chef Khanna had earned a Michelin star “the bill was comparable to what we’d pay at other restaurants.”
During the pandemic, he launched the non-profit Feed India that led to feeding 18 million meals in India in a four-month period. Though it’s no longer in existence, he expects to revive it in 10 years upon retirement. “Feeding India on a big scale,” he says, interests him.
Indian cuisine in New York City, he reminds us, started on 6th Street and now several blocks away, chef Khanna is running a 3-star Indian restaurant. As the stand-up Russian-born comic Yakov Smirnov, who often performs in Branson, Mo., might say, “What a country America is.”
