Meat the new classic

Some dishes are passed down through generations, but an unlikely favourite has emerged in the 2010s. Champaran Meat is taking over menus in India and even NYC

- VIR SANGHVI

Most Indian gastronomic classics -that is to say, dishes that you find on lots of menus — have been around for decades if not centuries. North Indian biryani dates back to the Mughals. What we now call Kerala biryani predates the Mughals by several centuries. The great kormas of Awadh are two centuries old. Rogan josh is so old that it is hard to even figure out when it left Kashmir and moved southwards.

The most recent Indian classics are the postIndependence dishes brought by Punjabis from West Pakistan: tandoori chicken and its offspring. We can date butter chicken to the late 1950s or early 1960s. And after that, no real standards have been created. But there is now a new dish cropping up nearly everywhere. It is called Champaran Meat and is such a hit that it's almost the signature dish of New York's Dhamaka, the hottest Indian restaurant in America and possibly the whole of the Western world.

At Dhamaka, chef Chintan Pandya's version is such a sensation that The New York Times has written glowingly about it, and nearly every review of the restaurant mentions this dish.