Hyderabadi Zaika To Temple Canteen, 4 Indian Restaurants On The List Of 'NYC's 100 Best Of 2024'

Indian cuisine has once again cemented its spot worldwide, as four restaurants have made it to the list of New York City’s top 100 restaurants for 2024. They were ranked by Pete Wells, the New York Times’ food critic.

Starting with Semma, located in Greenwich Village, which has been ranked 7th, five places up from the previous year’s rankings. The other restaurants include Dhamaka, located on the Lower East Side, at the 54th position; next comes the Temple Canteen, situated in Flushing, Queens, at the 80th rank; and Hyderabadi Zaika, based in Midtown Manhattan, stood at the 95th position. Notably, both Dhamaka and Temple Canteen have significantly improved their positions.

1. Seema RestaurantThis Greenwich Village restaurant offers a modern take on Indian cuisine and is well-known for South Indian foods. According to the New York Times, Pete Wells described Semma’s chef, Vijay Kumar’s interpretations of South Indian foods he had never seen before. “At Semma, he serves two dishes from his childhood that would be difficult to find in another New York restaurant,” wrote Pete Wells in 2022 according to the Times Of India.“One dish is Nathai Pirattal, which consists of snails, stir-fried with onions and tomatoes, soured with tamarind, and served in a small box made of banana leaves. The second dish is Chettinad-style venison, a shank cooked to sticky tenderness with star anise and a lichen called black stone flower, which is one of the prized seasonings of the Chettinad pantry,” Wells added on Semma.
2. Dhamaka RestaurantSituated on Delancey Street, Manhattan, Dhamaka restaurant is managed by Chef Chintan Pandya, a native of Mumbai. The restaurant recently replaced its original cuisine with new dishes. In the New York Times, Wells stated that the food offered in this restaurant would not be found anywhere in Manhattan. He further expressed that many customers must still be missing their old favourite dishes, which were earlier on the menu.The media outlet further added that during a 2021 review, Wells described its biryani as ‘a polyphonic riot of flavour.’ He went on to write, “Black peppercorns and green chillies rip through the rice, the darkly browned chunks of goat neck on the bone, and, finally, through your central nervous system. But when your eyes start to moisten, the heat is broken by a blast of fresh mint that arrives like a mojito on a humid summer afternoon.”
3. Temple CanteenThis restaurant, located at Holly Avenue, Queens, is a South Indian cafeteria. Temple Canteen is famous for its varieties of dosas, Rava dosas, paper dosas, and ice cream cone-shaped dosas roasted in ghee. The food critic also mentioned the special coconut chutney, which gets better the more one eats it.
4. Hyderabadi ZaikaBased in Midtown Manhattan, the Hyderabadi Zaika restaurant specialises in Hyderabadi cuisine. They offer varieties of Biryani, like Chicken Biryani 65, made with spicy lava red chicken, rich curries, and fried okra. It is believed that this food was discovered almost a long time ago in a hotel in Chennai.