How flavours explode

In NYC, reservations at Dhamaka sell out in minutes. Its India pop-up won locals over too. What's Chintan Pandya's secret?

- VIR SANGHVI

If you are interested in food, you have probably heard of New York’s Dhamaka. In the year it opened (2021), the New York Times put it at number one in its list of the city’s top ten new restaurants. (All restaurants: Not just Indian restaurants.) It is, by any objective standard, the most successful Indian restaurant in the Western world.

How successful? Suppose you wanted to have dinner at Dhamaka. You would go to the restaurant’s site to book a table and would discover that it was full for the next few weeks. But, you would feel that all was not lost, Dhamaka only accepts reservations for a 30-day period. While this particular 30-day period was full, you could try your luck when bookings opened for the next 30 period.

But on the day that reservations opened again, you would learn that all tables for the 30-day period had sold out within a few hours.

Who thought a day would come when reservations at an Indian restaurant in New York would be so much in demand? That an Indian restaurant would be rated as the top new restaurant in the world’s most competitive dining market?