Around the room, mirrors line white walls patched with fresh coats of paint in classic landlord fashion. The dining room is modest, a little worn around the edges, and tightly packed during the weekday lunch rush. There isn’t much decoration. Haandi—an Urdu word meaning a clay or copper cooking basin—is a longtime mainstay of Manhattan’s “Curry Hill” neighborhood, serving up primarily Pakistani cuisine alongside Indian and Bangladeshi favorites. Even among a neighborhood packed with South Asian competition and a city whose culinary landscape is forever evolving, people have kept returning Haandi for 25 years.
While grabbing a satisfying lunch for under $20 has become an increasingly challenging feat, Haandi remains one of Manhattan’s enduring cheap eats destinations. The weekday lunch special costs $13.99, drawing office workers, neighborhood regulars, and cabbies and for-hire drivers who have made the restaurant part of their daily routine for decades.
“When you’re in Manhattan and don’t want food from a food cart, and you want Halal Desi (South Asian), especially Pakistani, then Haandi is the place,” says Fahad, a regular customer.
Cheap Lunch at Haandi
Like the room itself, lunch at Haandi is straightforward. Curries, biryani, vegetables, and grilled meats sit behind a glass counter in steam heaters before staff warm each order and arrange it on bright red cafeteria trays. Every lunch special comes with basmati rice, plate-sized naan ($2.99), salad, and an acidic yogurt sauce called raita that cools the warming spices abundant in South Asian cuisine, with a choice of entrees that easily stretch into a filling afternoon meal. Nothing is plated for social media. The appeal lies in generous portions and familiar flavors.
The combination recommended by the two staff working: chicken korma swimming in an orange-colored sauce made for dipping ($13.99), lamb curry ($14.99), and dark green aloo palak ($11.99) offers a cross-section of the restaurant’s offerings. The korma is rich and warming, the lamb curry deeply savory, and the spinach and potatoes in the aloo palak provide an earthy counterpoint. A thick, bright yellow mango lassi ($6.99) offers welcome relief on a sweltering summer afternoon.
Haandi’s chicken biryani ($17.99) remains one of its signature dishes, alongside Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and Indian classics like beef masala ($14.99), chicken seekh kebab ($2.99), and flaky vegetable samosas ($1.99). The restaurant is also offering three FIFA World Cup specials: marinated lamb shank, steam-roasted for three to four hours, and served with yogurt ($15.99); a sweet carrot-based pudding ($7.99); and a halwa puri combo ($12.99). The restaurant serves the same cafeteria-style menu from 10 a.m. to 1 a.m. daily, making it just as much a destination for late-night dinners as midday meals.
Daily Ritual in Curry Hill
Positioned at the corner of Lexington and East 28th, Haandi sits in the heart of Curry Hill, the nickname for the stretch of Lexington Avenue between East 26th and 30th Streets that has become one of Manhattan’s best-known hubs for South Asian restaurants, groceries, and businesses. Over several decades, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and Indian entrepreneurs transformed the corridor into a culinary destination with restaurants sitting side by side.
Haandi has served that neighborhood since opening in 2001. The restaurant has long been associated with New York City’s taxi industry, approximately 40% of whose workforce consists of immigrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India. During this week’s lunch service, yellow cabs lined Lexington while drivers filtered in alone and in small groups, sharing meals before returning to the road. The pace is brisk. A posted 30-minute dining limit keeps tables turning through the rush. Most customers seem to know exactly what they’re ordering before they reach the counter.
A staircase directly behind the front entryway leads to a small, colorfully patterned prayer room with plush rugs covering the basement floor, where several men can be seen praying at any given time. For observant Muslims, the five daily prayers are performed at prescribed times, making a dedicated prayer space a practical accommodation for people spending long hours away from home.
Like many of New York’s best cheap eats, Haandi isn’t polished, but it doesn’t pretend to be, and that’s part of the appeal.
Haandi
113 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Open daily from 10 a.m. to 1 a.m.
