Passerine

The story

Crafted with passion, served with love

Spice of India, Spirit of New York

Passerine takes its name from an Indian folktale about a songbird that falls silent in captivity and only sings again upon release. That idea of culinary freedom runs through everything at this Flatiron Indian restaurant — from the philosophy behind its menu to the way it refuses to be defined by what Indian food is "supposed" to be. No butter chicken. No colonial nostalgia. Instead, a seasonal Indian kitchen that is unmistakably rooted in New York.

The restaurant was conceived by entrepreneur Maneesh K. Goyal and luxury branding specialist Alvina Patel Buxani, and opened in 2024 at 36 East 20th Street, a short walk from Union Square. The dining room, described by The Infatuation as "lush" and "leafy-wallpapered," connects to a lounge called the Drawing Room, which runs its own brief menu of smaller plates.

Chef Chetan Shetty

At the center of it all is Executive Chef Chetan Shetty, a Pune-born cook who spent nearly a decade overseeing the kitchens at Indian Accent in both New York and New Delhi, then moved to Washington D.C. to lead Rania, where he earned a Michelin star in 2023 — one of only three Indian restaurants in America to receive that distinction. He returned to New York in 2024 to build Passerine from the ground up.

His approach is precise about its starting point: curiosity, not tradition. "I want to use the best ingredients around me and make them Indian in a way that really makes sense," he has said. The spice blends that anchor his cooking are ground by his mother in Pune and shipped to New York — a vadagam blend made specifically for the aged sea bass, chile-fueled kolhapuri for the lamb tartare, ajwain masala for the baked oysters. These are layered against produce sourced directly from the Union Square Greenmarket, a few blocks away.

The Menu

The seven-course tasting menu — available in both non-vegetarian and vegetarian versions — is the fullest expression of Shetty's cooking. New York Magazine's Tammie Teclemariam traced a meal that moved from tuna tartare with ginger gelée and kaluga caviar, through crab on potato salli with peppery foam, to chicken in a creamy chile masala with flaky paratha, and finally to a dessert of chai ice cream buried in roasted pistachio cream beneath rosewater ice.

The à la carte menu is equally considered: Shrimp Koliwada with red pepper chutney, Beef Nihari with maitake and mint, Dayboat Scallops in coconut moilee, Monkfish in a Konkani curry with trout roe. Greenmarket vegetables — maitake mushrooms, collards, broccoli rabe, sweet potatoes — appear alongside unexpected touches like Comté and Hollandaise, absorbed into an Indian framework rather than grafted onto it.

The wine list, which earned Passerine a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence in 2025, runs to more than 300 labels. The cocktail program is equally deliberate, with signatures like the Noor Chai Martini and the Monsoon Mezcal Margarita built around Indian flavors and ingredients.

The Philosophy

The Florence Fabricant review in The New York Times put it plainly: regional Indian cuisine is the focus, and the spice blends do the heavy lifting. What makes Passerine distinctive is the discipline behind the creativity — every component on a plate serves a purpose, and the menu shifts with the seasons. As the restaurant's own statement puts it, Indian culinary heritage functions here as "a vocabulary rather than a rulebook."