Everything You Need to Know About Passerine, Opening Soon in Gramercy

1. If the team behind Passerine sounds familiar …

That’s because owner Maneesh K. Goyal also owns Temple Bar, the atmospheric Noho mainstay for martinis, and Sona Home, an e-commerce extension of the former restaurant, which sells dinnerware and home decor. Goyal originally opened Sona, meaning gold, in 2021, with actor Priyanka Chopra Jonas as a co-investor, in the same space on East 20th Street, but the restaurant closed this June. “I don’t think Sona was kind of the homerun I wanted it to be. It was a real education for me,” Goyal says, “and now I feel like I’ve learned, I’ve paid my dues, and I’m ready for prime time.”

Passerine’s chef Chetan Shetty, who previously helmed the Michelin-awarded Rania in D.C. after a decade serving as the executive chef of Indian Accent in New Delhi and New York, leads the kitchen. April Busch, an alumnus of Atera, Indian Accent, and June in Nashville, heads the beverage program.

2. And the team’s ties run deep.

Goyal’s business partner and best friend of decades, Alvina Patel Buxani, the co-founder of Passerine, led communications for various luxury fashion brands before joining Goyal. Busch and Shetty also happen to be married to each other. “He’s a magician. And that’s not just the wife speaking,” Busch says.

“We’re a true New York team,” Goyal says. “We have a husband-and-wife duo … You’ve got best friends who are coming together to offer this to New York. Our maître d’ is a South African woman. Our assistant general manager is an Italian woman. Of course, South Asians are working here as well, but this is really a New York restaurant.”

3. What’s the story behind the name?

The restaurant’s namesake is a type of Indian sparrow and draws from a folktale about a songbird that only sings upon release. In the story, a king, captivated by its melody, cages the bird, causing it to stop singing. For the team, Passerine is about culinary freedom, self-expression, and inviting others to try something new.

That means that you won’t find butter chicken on the menu. “There are many beautiful places to get a butter chicken in New York, and you can satisfy that craving elsewhere. It’s just not something we’ll do” Goyal says. Instead, Passerine wants to shine a light on unexpected dishes, such as beef nihari, a labor-intensive dish where seared, bone-in beef is cooked with spices, rich ghee, and a flour roux, and simmered in a broth until it falls off the bone and a velvety sauce develops.

Goyal believes that so much of the culinary innovation coming out of India hasn’t quite made its way to the U.S. as much it has in other global cities. So he’s also looked to BiBi in London, with its inventive tasting menus, and Mumbai’s Masque, for its near-militant attention to experimentation, for inspiration, too.

4. The space resembles a dreamlike garden.

Passerine’s ink-black street façade leads to a small, matching booth right out of a Edgar Allan Poe novel. Once you step inside, you’ll notice forest green botanical wallpaper and deep jewel tones that mimic a passerine’s feathers.

The 65-seat restaurant is divided into a drawing room, or a British-style living room more ornate than its American counterparts, and a larger dining area. Tasseled velvet curtains and a sleek, 13-seat black marble bar partition the two sections. Interior designer Mapa Mueller went for maximalism while avoiding stereotypical Indian touches such as arches. Notably, the corridor to a private dining room in the basement includes glittering, metal mesh that glows in the dark.

Mueller purposely crafted a “moody and enveloping” experience for diners. “When people come and spend a couple of hours or stop by for a nightcap, once they step back into the streets of New York City, I wanted them to feel transported, to be like, ‘Was that a dream?’” she says.

5. The menu will change often.

While chefs all over the neighborhood look to the Union Square greenmarket for inspiration, for Shetty, it’s been a challenge to incorporate Western produce into Indian food in a way that feels thoughtful. He considers having a seasonal menu as the “only option.”

“Before the evolution of supermarkets in India, you could only get vegetables that are in season from street hawkers,” Shetty says. “I’m trying to replicate what I grew up seeing at home: using what’s available.” He uses ramps, uncommon in Indian cooking, for a chutney, and shaved beetroot with goat cheese for a tart based on poriyal, a South Indian stir-fry studded with mustard seeds. He expects to change the menu multiple times a month, and the same seasonal philosophy shines through the cocktail menu, too.

6. Dinner is the main — and only event.

Passerine’s food spans traditional Indian and European-style cooking. The menu is divided into two sections: a handful of small plates for the drawing room, which has a lounge-like feel, includes oysters with a spiced mignonette and a scallion uttapam, a thick, savory pancake with Comté and caviar.

A longer dining room menu is also available at the bar. It features appetizers like a channa masala panisse, chicken koftas with pickled mushrooms and truffle, and aloo (potato dumplings) with a benne, or sesame seed chutney. Large plates include hay-smoked scallops with a Konkani curry punctuated with tamarind, spicy Naga pork from the Eastern state of Nagaland with fermented beans and broccoli rabe, and slow-roasted cabbage suspended over a coconut curry.

Shetty is most proud of the lamb program at Passerine. “We’re trying to use one part of lamb and come up with three different dishes,” he says. “So much of Indian cooking ends up doused in curry.” By contrast, he hopes to highlight meat itself with innovative cooking techniques. For example, Shetty braises his beef nihari for more than 18 hours until the meat yields to its own juices, forming a viscous, savory sauce with ribbons of shredded beef. There’s also a Kohlapuri lamb tartare, rare for an Indian restaurant, served atop shiso leaves, and a lamb cheela, a chickpea crepe.

The sides are also harder-to-find dishes in New York. Think a blue corn bakhri, or nixtamalized flatbread with brown butter, or a red rice ganji, served with its brothy cooking liquid and topped with dried shrimp kishmur, a type of crumble. Diners can expect desserts like a kuttu, or pumpkin pavlova with a coconut and mandarin orange sorbet, and a “Big Apple” gulab jamun with yogurt and coriander.

7. Don’t overlook the wine list.

Busch, who began working with Shetty at Indian Accent in 2016, said she was “blown away” by how well acidic, fruit-forward wines pair with Indian food, and also cut the richness of ghee. “There’s the stereotype that with Indian food, you have a beer, or you have a cocktail, right?” she notes. She adds that the formulation of whites for seafood and rich reds for meat doesn’t necessarily work with Indian food, as the spice adds a third dimension.

For example, after trying to pair various kinds of prosecco with a coconut-based moilee sauce, Busch landed on an oaked California chardonnay, discovering that American oak adds a coconut undertone to wine.

At Passerine, the wine list will start with about 300 varieties, and expand to 450. You can find Grenache-based blends, Austrian Grüner Veltliner, and wines from the Southern Rhône. Busch also prioritizes wines under $150 per bottle.

If you’re craving a cocktail, though, Mario Castro, previously of Jua, the Michelin-starred Korean restaurant, has curated an extensive list of cocktails named after different passerine species. You can find the Spotted Nutcracker, inspired by Indian badam doodh (sweetened milk with cardamom and slivered almonds), made with Mijenta Reposado Tequila, a badam orgeat, and walnut Il Mallo Nocino liquor. The Scarlet Minivet is Passerine’s nod to a Negroni and includes Black Tea Arbikie gin, lychee, and Indian-spiced vermouth.

“We’re a decidedly Indian restaurant, but Indian through a whole new lens,” Goyal says.

Passerine will be open daily for dinner starting at 5 p.m. beginning on Nov. 1.

Mehr Singh is a New York-based food writer with bylines in T Magazine, Eater, Bon Appétit, and Food52. Follow her on Instagram. Follow Resy, too.