(Bloomberg) -- My credentials as a culinary contrarian may have peaked three summers ago, when I argued that New York had better Indian restaurants than London. The piece provoked outrage in the British capital, where I was then in residence, and in India, the land of my birth. “Nothing you ever write, for the rest of your life, will annoy more people than that one,” declared an old schoolmate.

When I moved back home to the Big Apple soon afterward, uncharitable friends asked if I had been chased out of London by cleaver-wielding locals. Inevitably, on my first visit back last month, some of these friends asked if I was now ready to recant.

My response: If anything, New York has extended its lead in the quality Indian food department, with an even broader range of regional diversity. In the intervening years, Semma opened and garnered a Michelin star for chef Vijay Kumar’s brilliant South Indian cooking, and Masalawala & Sons has brought the best of Bengal to Brooklyn’s Park Slope. (Both are backed by Roni Mazumdar and Chintan Pandya, the duo that had already brought us Dhamaka and Adda.)

More recent openings include Jazba, which specializes in coastal cooking, a cuisine that doesn’t get enough attention outside India, and Kebab aur Sharab, which lives up to its name with a list of grilled meats the length of your arm — plus, intriguing variations like a yoghurt kebab. There’s also Hyderabadi biryani at Zaiqa and craft cocktails at GupShup.

They are among the notable, far-ranging Indian dining spots around town, many at the higher tiers of the price spectrum. Collectively, Indian restaurants are becoming something of a power dining scene, drawing customers from the upwardly mobile population of New Yorkers with roots in the subcontinent.

To this already impressive list, you can now add Kanyakumari, which dishes out delicacies from India’s 4,700-mile coastline at the more easily accessible Union Square. The latest from restaurateur Salil Mehta, it has already earned a Michelin recommendation. Chef Dipesh Shinde produces dishes from every state along the Indian peninsula; there’s a special nod to his native Mumbai with the street-food classic Vada Pav potato sandwich.

But arguably the most exciting entrant to the expanding list of great Indian eateries in the city is Bungalow, which marks Chef Vikas Khanna’s long-awaited return to the New York dining scene. Khanna, one of the world’s most famous Indian chefs, was executive chef at Junoon in 2011, when the Flatiron dining room received its first Michelin star.

What all these restaurants have in common is a commitment to authenticity. Unlike in years past, when recipes at Indian eateries were routinely watered down for timid American palates — or, in some instances, hyper-spiced up for the benefit of daredevil diners — the chefs at these restaurants make no concessions. (Not for nothing is the Mazumdar-Pandya enterprise called Unapologetic Foods.)

This is in part because New Yorkers have become more gastronomically adventurous over the years — a natural consequence of more and more exposure to international cooking. But the main reason is the city’s burgeoning population of Indians and Indian Americans, who crave the tastes of the old country. It’s part of a national trend — Indian Americans now represent the largest group of the Asian population, based on 2020 Census Bureau numbers. Throw in folks from other South Asian nations with similar taste palates — Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka — and you have a critical mass of people who self-identify as desi. (The word, common to several of the region’s languages, translates loosely as “from the homeland.”)

London has a large, long-standing desi population, thanks to its colonial history, and the New York City metropolitan area has traditionally been home to the largest concentration of South Asians in the US. Until fairly recently, most of this cohort satisfied gastronomic cravings by cooking at home or patronizing cheap, hole-in-the wall establishments. Restaurants in the pricier boroughs needed a sizable non-desi clientele to make their economics work and sacrificed authenticity to the altar of profitability.

But the recent efflorescence of authentic Indian eateries suggests there’s now a critical mass, within the desi community, of people who will gladly pay a premium for the real thing. “There are Indians on Wall Street who want to celebrate their latest multimillion-dollar deal by taking their friends to an Indian restaurant,” Mehta says. “And if they’re paying top dollar for dinner, they’re going to insist on everything being like they remember it from their favorite place in Delhi or Mumbai.”

At Bungalow, Khanna reckons South Asians make up 60% to 65% of the clientele on any given evening. At Kanyakumari the afternoon I went for lunch, the only non-South Asians were the serving staff.

For chefs, this is liberating. Khanna says he was able to craft Bungalow’s menu with a freedom and confidence he didn’t have earlier. He recalls a conversation with Anthony Bourdain in 2013: “He had just returned from a trip to India, and he said, ‘You guys are white-washing Indian food in New York.’ I couldn’t deny it.”

Although Junoon’s menu sounded Indian, the food was cooked for a Western clientele: Good enough for the Michelin judges, perhaps, but not quite to the chef’s satisfaction. “I’d been taught in French schools that Indian food was inferior,” Khanna says. “I still felt an inferiority complex.”

The menu at Bungalow is completely self-assured. The Sheermal, a saffron-infused bread rarely seen outside northern India, pairs wonderfully with the Nihari stewed of lamb shanks, redolent in cinnamon and cardamom. Don’t let the stylish presentation fool you: It tastes true to the gritty backstreets of Lucknow. He does a mean yoghurt kebab, too.

Khanna attributes his newfound self-confidence to Pandya, who worked for him at Junoon. “His cooking was so pure, it inspired me,” Khanna says. “Mera dil nikal ke le gaya, who ladka.” (“That boy stole my heart.”) He credits Mazumdar and Pandya with breaking the mold for Indian restaurants. “They made a statement: Our time has come,” he says.

Look out, London: New York’s Indian game hasn’t peaked yet.

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