Gazab

New "nice" Indian From the NYM food newsletter: A few days earlier, I had been similarly captivated by a different restaurant, Gazab. The food is completely different from Rowdy Rooster’s, but there seemed to be a strong overlap in the crowds that gathered at both restaurants. Under the gaze of Gazab’s floor-to-ceiling dining-room mural — a woman with a Champagne flute staring out over her sunglasses — a guy wearing a Polo teddy-bear sweatshirt and a turban split some biryani with his partner while three women sipping mango lassis asked for an extra side of ghee. I didn’t ask anyone where they were from, of course, but I took it as a good sign that they all seemed to know their way around the food. I took cues from all of them and ordered the chicken biryani and lamb. When the women asked for an extra side of garlic naan, I ordered that, too. A hungover-looking group of three waited for a table, and I overheard two guys on a date talking about how the food was “just like India.” (I skipped the dish called ’70s Tikka Masala, though I appreciated the way the owners seemed to nod to its undisputed ubiquity while embracing its populist appeal.)