Friday, July 8, 12:00 noon
Members $60, guests $70

As former New York Times dining critic William Grimes lamented, most New York Indian restaurants “fall into the Curry in a Hurry category: small places with very limited ambitions.” But upon the opening of Adä, House of India, Grimes announced, “For hardened veterans of the $15.95 Indian buffet wars, however, Adä arrives like a piece of good news.”

Named for an Urdu word meaning “innovative style,” Adä was created by restaurateur Darshan “David” Shah in his mission to change American preconceptions about Indian food. Located in the lower floors of a brownstone on New York’s Upper East Side, Adä’s design features soaring ceilings, Murano glass wall sconces, and an Indian tapas lounge with a 14-foot mahogany bar. Moving far beyond lassi and beer, the wine list offers an impressive selection of French, German, Italian, Australian, and American wines.

The chef behind Adä’s innovative menu is Rajender Singh Rana, who has crafted refined dishes such as stuffed morel mushrooms with wild mushroom biryani and white truffle oil, ginger-mint lamb chops with caramelized greenmarket fingerlings and apricot chutney, and garam masala quails with pistachio-date pilau. All of which are “subtle and delicately spiced,” according to New York Observer critic Moira Hodgson, who called Adä “different from…any other Indian restaurant in New York.” Unlike those eateries, Adä is truly “fine dining,” wrote critic J. Walman in his Restaurant Report, praising Rana’s “uncommonly delicious tasting dinner” featuring dishes such as Kerala fish curry and “wonderful” Kashmir cauliflower with almond milk paste and masala peas. And although many of New York’s Indian restaurants are far removed from their country of origin, Adä, Walman wrote, “is reminiscent of a trendy place in New Delhi or Bombay.”

Although he draws on the cuisines of the 27 different states in India, chef Rana is himself a native of New Delhi. He trained under renowned cooking teacher and food writer Jigs Kalara before working at the celebrated Bukhara restaurant at the Hotel Maurya Sheraton and Towers, and as the executive chef of the Delhi Hyatt Regency. Rana also worked at the Bahrain Sheraton and the Hyatt Regency Riverside before coming to New York to open Adä in January 2001.