01-05-2025
New York's Game-Changing Indian Restaurant Adda Reopens With a Surprising Specialty
Roni Mazumdar and Chintan Pandya have never lacked for ambition. When the co-founders of Unapologetic Foods group opened Adda Indian Canteen in New York's Long Island City in the fall of 2018, their goal was, as Mazumdar recalls it, 'to challenge the clichés about Indian cuisine.'
Those clichés were writ large on most of the city's Indian restaurant menus, which serve such standard (and often substandard) fare as butter naan, daal makhni and butter chicken. All three dishes were featured on Unapologetic Foods' first foray, the now-shuttered Rahi in Greenwich Village. At Adda, their second spot, 'we were challenging ourselves to be better representatives of our cuisine and culture,' says Pandya.
