With enough enthusiasm to fill the Taj Mahal, my friend Tarik Currimbhoy, a sculptor and architect, guided me through the construction site of his latest project, Junoon, an 18,000-square-foot, high-end Indian restaurant he’s designing at 27 W. 24th St. (in the space formerly occupied by a nightclub called Eugene’s) , which will probably open the first week of November. For reasons both culinary and architectural, it’s perhaps the most eagerly anticipated new restaurant this season.
Power tools whirred as we stepped over thick orange extension chords and around ladders, giant wooden crates and all manner of building materials. Workers sawed, banged and did lots of noisy things in this vast, unfinished space, while Tarik spoke in the present tense. “This is the ‘Tree of Life’ painting,” he said, gesturing to a bare wall. “Over here is the lounge…open kitchen…reflecting pool…tent-shaped light fixtures…” Already in place are ornate 200-year-old columns that define two areas of the 150-seat dining room. A long, double-sided swing, like a porch swing for a palace in Jaipur, is pushed off to the side and will be moved into the bar as soon as the saw horses are removed.
Most spectacular is the restaurant’s exterior and interior walls made of hand-chiseled kaddappa, a black limestone from India. Tarik holds the design patent for the process of sculpting the stone so that it appears to be woven, then polishing it until it’s literally as smooth as silk.
Owner Rajesh Bhardwaj told me that in a spice room on the lower level, cardamom, cumin and all sorts of other aromatic seeds, pods and leaves will be ground every morning, so that Chef Vikas Khanna can prepare regional dishes using farm-to-table ingredients and only the freshest seasonings. “We’re taking Indian food to a higher level,” he said, adding that the restaurant will be the first in New York City to highlight the five traditional styles of Indian cooking: curries and other sauces, tandoor (clay) oven, cast iron griddle, stone for searing meats and char broiling.
A short walk from lovely, leafy Madison Square Park, home of the original Shake Shack, this block is fast becoming a veritable Restaurant Row. It’s diagonally across the street from Eataly, Mario Batali’s much-buzzed-about new Italian foodworld; directly across from quirky Thai restaurant Planethailand 212; beside cozy but sleek Italian roost San Rocco; and two doors down from Nuevo Latino extravaganza Nuela.