Cardamom – Goa's coast on a Sunnyside side street

On a quiet side street off Queens Boulevard in Sunnyside, Cardamom has been serving Goan-accented Indian food since 2018, its bright orange awning marking out one of the borough's less showy addresses. It holds a Bib Gourmand in the MICHELIN Guide, the distinction given to good quality, good value cooking, after first being named among the city's new Bib Gourmands in 2021 and holding the rating ever since, including the 2025 selection. The room is small and unpretentious, the kind of place regulars return to rather than discover once, and the kitchen's reputation rests less on spectacle than on the clarity of its curries. Behind the counter today is owner Anil Amin, whose own roots trace back to Goa, on India's west coast, the region whose Portuguese-inflected cooking still gives the menu its sharpest, most distinctive dishes.

01The chef and the kitchen

Cardamom opened in August 2018, taking over the site of the former Biriyani House on 43rd Street. The restaurant was the first of its own for chef Alwyn Gudhino, a Jackson Heights resident who had spent decades cooking in Manhattan kitchens including Bricklane Curry House in the East Village, Utsav near Rockefeller Center and Nirvana close to the Chrysler Building before deciding to open on his own terms.

The name itself carries a personal note: Gudhino chose cardamom for the spice so central to Indian cooking, with the "mom" ending intended as a nod to the mother and grandmother who first taught him to cook in Goa. Today the restaurant is run by owner Anil Amin, who also traces his own path back to Goa. Amin's route to Sunnyside was not a straight one — after losing friends and his workplace in the September 11 attacks, he weathered recession and then the pandemic before starting again at Cardamom, a story that has since been told in Fine Dining Lovers by S.Pellegrino and shared within the local Sunnyside Shines community.

02The cooking

The kitchen's real strength lies in its Goan and Indo-Portuguese repertoire — a part of Indian cooking still relatively rare across New York. From the start, the menu has carried vindaloo, balchao and xacutti, the last a curry built on fresh coconut and a carefully layered blend of spices, alongside Gudhino's original signature, Goan tandoori shrimp finished in a clay oven. Reviewers single out the Goan fish curry and the coconut-and-curry-leaf notes of dishes like chicken caldeen and lamb xacuti, while the methi curry and saag chana show a lighter, vegetable-led side of the kitchen. North Indian tandoor standards sit alongside these — butter chicken, chicken tikka masala, garlic naan — giving the menu a pan-Indian spread that stretches well beyond its Goan core.

Insider tip

Closed Tuesdays; small room, so booking ahead for groups is advised.

Portion and spice are both treated seriously: the kitchen will adjust heat on request, and the naan, cooked to order, is repeatedly singled out by regulars for its char and crispness. The broader menu also runs to more than a dozen vegan dishes and a long list of vegetarian and halal options, reflecting a deliberately wide net rather than a tight tasting-menu style of cooking.

03What to order

Starters worth the detour include the vegetable samosa, a crisp turnover of potato and green peas, and dahi puri, served with small edible bases designed to stop the crisp shells rolling off the plate — a detail noted by local food writers covering the neighbourhood's restaurant crawl. From the mains, baingan bharta (char-roasted eggplant mashed with fresh herbs and ginger), chana masala and the creamy, tomato-and-yogurt butter chicken are mainstays, alongside chicken malai kabab from the tandoor. Among the Goan specialities, lamb vindaloo and xacutti remain the dishes to start with, and the Goan tandoori shrimp is the closest thing the kitchen has to a founding signature. To finish, kulfi, rasmalai and gulab jamun cover the traditional end of the dessert list.

04The neighbourhood

Sunnyside sits a few stops from Manhattan on the 7 train, and Cardamom occupies a quiet stretch of 43rd Street just off the Queens Boulevard corridor, close to the Bliss Street end of the neighbourhood's restaurant row. The area is dense with small, family-run kitchens from across Asia and Latin America, and Cardamom has become one of its fixtures: the restaurant takes part every year in Taste of Sunnyside, the open-air crawl of more than sixty local eateries now in its fifteenth year, where owner Anil Amin is a regular and visibly enthusiastic presence at the Cardamom table.

05When to go and booking

Cardamom opens Monday, Wednesday to Friday from 4pm to 10pm, and Saturday and Sunday from noon to 10pm; it is closed on Tuesdays, according to the restaurant's own site. The dining room is small, so arriving early on weekends or calling ahead for larger groups is worth doing. Outdoor seating is available and pets are welcome there, while the restaurant takes American Express, Discover, Mastercard and Visa. Around Diwali the kitchen also puts together a house-made mithai platter for the occasion, a seasonal detail worth timing a visit around.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.