Meet some of the Big Apple’s hottest and happening Indian chefs…

They are the interpreters of Indian Cuisine, the innovators who aren’t afraid to experiment and create, adding new dimensions to the food they grew up with, giving an exciting buzz to the ho-hum chicken tikka masala and palak paneer which has become the norm of Indian restaurants around the world. Some of them are at the helm of New York’s most noted Indian restaurants and bring in the foodies.

When you need to find a wonderful restaurant where do you turn? Forget reviews and restaurant guides, just hop into a cab and consult your taxiwalla!

Layne Mosler is a New Yorker who has found that the cabbie who knows his way on the streets of Manhattan can also guide you to the right restaurant. Constantly navigating the city, cabbies are a great resource for off-the-beaten-track inexpensive places with authentic food.

While Christmas is important to Indian Christians as a celebration of faith, many non-Christians enjoy it as a secular holiday in ways small and big. Indeed, Christmas is such a huge, high voltage commercialized event in America that few can escape its allure, be they Christians or not.
One person who takes Christmas very seriously is Mohina Josen, a second generation Indian-American who grew up in New York. The family sets up not one but two elaborate trees and hosts a rocking holiday party with Santa Claus, elves and all the trimmings – and even a pre-Christmas party to start up the festivities!

Is Bollywood entertainment getting outsourced? At a big Indian wedding in New York there are the usual beaming uncles and aunties, lots of great Indian food, the latest Bollywood music. The dance floor clears and there’s a bespangled dancer doing all the classic moves from ‘Umrao Jaan’ as the appreciative crowd gathers around and claps.

The dancer is Russian and doesn’t speak any Hindi!

She is Inessa from Uzbekistan and is quite the star at Indian community events in New York, be it weddings, engagement parties or other celebrations.

To bite into a mango and get that sweet, sticky juice squirting all over your chin and clothes is to drift back into blissful childhood, into days that seemed to have no beginning and no end.

“I am 29 years old and I live at home with my folks…Wooh hoo! I’m getting lucky every night…home cooked meals, my laundry gets washed and they’re arranging dates for me left right and centre. It doesn’t get any luckier than that!” So says Sanjay Gupta – no, not the CNN superstar – but the one who runs his parents’ corner store in New Zealand, home to about 4.4 million people – and 40 million sheep!

Meet Dr. Neha Sangwan, a young physician based in San Francisco, CA. She has been on the precipice and seen just how traumatic burnout can be. In fact, Neha Sangwan was her own first patient!

A rustic Gujarati meal; a perfect lacy masala dosa; a Jain meal without a hint of onions or garlic; a katyal biryani as aromatic as the one your mother makes.
Wait, there’s more! A Pad Thai brimming with vegetables; a Korean vegetarian feast inherited from ancient temples; and an organic Zen meal which is as soothing [...]

With deft, intricate brush-strokes Jhumpa Lahiri creates characters that are so real you could swear you recognize them, you know them, or at least people like them.

In the last decade, audiences have seen the emergence of slick comedies, horror films, murder mysteries, sci-fi, ensemble movies and a whole lot more from innovative young directors like Mani Ratnam, Ram Gopal Varma, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Vishal Bharadwaj and Karan Johar.