If you are travelling to New York from India, chances are Bungalow is already somewhere on your food list. For some travellers, getting a table at Vikas Khanna ’s restaurant has become part of the New York plan itself. Some have tried for months to get a reservation, while others make it a point to stop by even if they can’t get a table. I asked Khanna about this during a conversation about his personal travel experiences and what it means for Bungalow to become a destination for Indian travellers in New York. His answer went well beyond food.
For Khanna, the restaurant is about giving people a reason to leave home at a time when getting food delivered has become so easy. Food can now reach your doorstep quickly and conveniently, so a restaurant has to offer something different. Khanna is keen to take diners beyond the usual paneer and dal choices and introduce them to food from different parts of India. During our conversation, he was excited about a Jharkhand dish that was about to go live on Bungalow’s social media. It is this regional focus that makes the restaurant interesting for Indian travellers too. You may be thousands of kilometres away from home, but the food on the table can take you to a part of India you may not have visited yourself. The restaurant also changes with festivals and occasions. Vikas Khanna spoke about the preparations for Navratri and a rangoli inspired by his mother’s feet. There are cultural and gift teams working behind the scenes too. Khanna wants guests to feel that they have been welcomed into a home rather than simply served a meal. He compared it to leaving a grandmother’s house, where you rarely leave empty-handed. At Bungalow, he wants guests to take something with them when they leave. Khanna has spent years travelling through India and the world through food, so I asked him about one meal or destination that had stayed with him. He was at the Jagannath Temple and remembers its remarkable kitchen and a simple rice preparation with cinnamon. The experience has stayed with him ever since. For Khanna, it was not simply about the number of dishes. It was the generosity of the experience and the sense that there was something much bigger behind the food being served. For Vikas Khanna , that is what makes New York so interesting. You can eat your way through different parts of the world without really leaving the city. And that idea feels quite close to what he is doing with Bungalow too, bringing different parts of India to a city where people already understand what it means to carry food and memories from home.
His answer took him back to Puri in 2009. He was getting ready to leave when someone came to him with around 30 different things to eat.
“After the pandemic, I realised that people have the privilege of eating at home,” he told me. It was planned to be made on the ceiling, a tiny personal detail that says quite a lot about how much of his own story goes into Bungalow.
Perhaps that is the best way to look at Khanna’s New York recommendations. You do not need to make every meal a big occasion. Sometimes it is a plate of dosa, a Ukrainian meal in the East Village or a simple rice and chicken dish that will feed not just your stomach but also your soul.
