Every time I go home I usually go to the same old places, so I thought it would be nice to try some place different in the city for my mom's birthday. I had heard about Rasika from a bunch of friends and the chef, Vikram Sunderam, was recently awarded a James Beard Award, so I thought it was worth a visit. I booked the reservation over a month in advance and the only two slots left were the 5:30 and 9:30pm slots. Since I'm an old lady now, I took the 5:30 one but I was surprised at how popular it was.
Upon walking in, I noticed that it was a much more of a modern place than the typical mom and pop Indian places on 6th street in New York that I'm used to. They have a tasting menu as well as an a la carte menu. We opted for the a la carte since the tasting menu seemed like a lot of food. The place is famous for their Palak Chaat ($11), so we had to order that. We also got the Tawa Baigan ($9), the Black Cod ($28) and the Dal Dhungaree ($6) with a side of garlic naan ($3) and cucumber raita ($5). The Palak Chaat came out first and it was fantastic. It's crispy baby spinach, yogurt, tamarind and date with some red onion and tomato. The spinach leaves were perfectly crispy - it wasn't too dried out or raw. The tamarind and date gave it a nice tang and of course red onion, tomato, and cilantro always make any dish delicious in my book. It was unique and fabulous. Next came the Tawa Baigan which was sliced eggplant layered and stacked with spiced potato in between each layer - it was quite tasty as well although it didn't seem as unique as the chaat. For the main, they brought out the black cod and the dal with the naan and rice. The black cod was melt in your mouth amazing. I wish I didn't have to split it family style. It had a honey glaze that wasn't too overpowering but added a nice touch to the dish. The one thing that I didn't love about it was that it was served with a peanut quinoa that just didn't do anything for me. It was fine but I would have rather had more fish and no quinoa. Lastly, I tried the Dal dish - which was your typical lentils with garlic and tomato sauce and lots and lots of cream. I love a great dal dish and the sauce was great, but I just wish there was more lentils. There just wasn't enough actual lentils to make it a hearty dish but the flavor of what was in there was great.
The one small service snafu was that we had ordered more naan because there was too much dal. So we waited and waited and the naan never came even though our waiter and the hostess both told us it was on its way. While I don't know much about cooking, I know that naan doesn't take 20 minutes to make. They finally admitted that they gave our naan to another table. What?! At that point, we didn't really want it anymore but they apologized profusely and brought out another naan (it only took 5 minutes) and brought another side of dal because otherwise, what was the point of the naan? The extra naan and dal was free of charge. So that was nice and appreciated but it kind of disappointing in general from such a high end restaurant.
Overall, it was a lovely experience and the food was quite tasty. It's not like the crazy, loud or even traditional Indian places in NYC that I love, but it was a nice birthday experience, especially for an "older" crowd. Total bill: $120 for 3 people with tax and tip
Photo Credit: Yelp
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