Chennai Garden
For Pradeep Shinde, co-owner of the new Chennai Garden, a successful restaurant has universal appeal. “Nobody should say no,” he says, and to that end, his kosher, meatless, mostly South Indian menu appeals to vegetarians, Orthodox Jews, and Muslims alike. So does lots of the Curry Hill competition, but according to Shinde, they’re all following in his trend-setting footsteps: He claims to have launched the kosher-Indian trend at Madras Mahal a decade ago. In colorful new digs on a quiet side street, his kitchen’s turning out a fresh, flavorful roster of dosai, uthappam, and Punjabi and Gujarati curries, plus a $5.95 weekday lunch buffet and $13.95 combination dinners.
129 East 27th Street
212-689-1999

Barking Dog
The third branch of this comfort-food chainlet features the same canine paraphernalia as its predecessors, but since it’s located in a hotel, it also serves breakfast. Dog people and those who love them can sit indoors or out, at a patio equipped with rocking chairs, flower boxes, and a “dog bar.”
50 East 34th Street
212-871-3900

Kitchen 82
When Charlie Palmer converted Alva into Kitchen 22, he created the perfect neighborhood restaurant for these not-exactly-flush times. Now he’s brought the $25 prix fixe formula (and equally affordable wines) to a new neighborhood, where the locals will happily line up without reservations for seasonal American fare like beef carpaccio with green lentils and eggplant caviar, and roasted chicken with porcini risotto.
461 Columbus Avenue, at 82nd Street
212-875-1619

The Big Finale
With the introduction of his $25 dessert tasting, Blue Hill pastry chef Pierre Reboul addresses the burning issue of where to go just for dessert. His sophisticated parade of sweets (available nightly after 9:30) will change with the seasons, but for now, it begins delicately with a palate-cleansing litchi-champagne sorbet before progressing to a triplex of crushed avocado under thin layers of lime sorbet and salted-caramel wafer, dense chocolate bread pudding, and mango rolls stuffed with tropical-fruit curd in a coconut-tapioca puddle. He builds up to a confectionery crescendo with an espresso cup of tart passion-fruit soufflé and a Chinese soup spoon of passion-fruit ice cream, then winds down with petits fours, and finally a batch of warm financiers wrapped in a linen napkin—which you might, at that point, be tempted to use as a white flag.
Blue Hill
75 Washington Place
212-539-1776