Chola – a 2,000-year-old dynasty's name on Manhattan's table

Chola sits on East 58th Street, on the seam between Midtown East's trading floors and the Upper East Side's antique shops, and it has done so since 1998. The restaurant takes its name from the Chola dynasty, a Tamil power that ruled southern India for more than two millennia, and from the start it set out to do for regional coastal cooking what Manhattan's Mughal-leaning Indian dining rooms rarely attempted. Its founder, Shiva Natarajan, was a pioneer of the city's Indian restaurant scene, later opening Dhaba, Chote Nawab and Malai Marke; today Chola belongs to his protégé Min Bhujel, while Natarajan remains closely involved in developing the menu. The restaurant holds the MICHELIN Guide's selection and has been reviewed twice-starred by The New York Times, with further notice from The Wall Street Journal and Eater New York. It is listed in the Guide as a special-occasion address for Indian and regional cuisine.

01The room and the setting

The dining room was taken back to the studs for Chola's twentieth anniversary and the result reads as contemporary rather than nostalgic. A vintage clock still greets guests at the entrance, but beyond it the front bar glows under golden hanging lights, and the long dining room beyond is lined with marbled walls, grey leather booth seating and hardwood floors. Black-and-white photographs of the coastline of southern India run along the walls, a quiet reminder that the kitchen's reference point is Kerala and Andhra Pradesh rather than the Mughal north.

The restaurant is fitted for ease rather than spectacle: air conditioning, wheelchair access, and a sound level that, even after the refresh, stays low enough for conversation across the table.

02The chef and the owners

Shiva Natarajan, born in Calcutta, opened Chola in 1998 and used it as the base from which he went on to open several more Indian restaurants in New York, Westchester and Connecticut. He has since passed day-to-day ownership to his protégé, Min Bhujel, but continues to shape the menu, and in recent seasons has added twenty-five new dishes drawn from his own travels through India in search of regional recipes.

Insider tip

Lunch daily 12–3pm; dinner Mon–Sat 5–10.45pm, Sun 5–10pm, per the restaurant's site.

That continuing partnership has kept Chola visible well beyond its own dining room: Natarajan has appeared on Martha Stewart's Roku programme Martha Cooks, walking through dishes such as butter chicken, okra, lemon rice and raita, and the restaurant's name recurs in New York Magazine and Zagat listings going back to 2006 and 2007.

03The cooking

Chola's menu runs wider than most Indian rooms in the city, moving from a Tandoor section through vegan, paneer, vegetarian, lamb and goat, shrimp, chicken, fish and lobster listings, into a British Curry Club and a Mughlai biryani section. The kitchen makes its spice blends, chutneys and sauces in-house, including its own ghee, and the seafood leans deliberately toward the coastline between Kerala and Andhra Pradesh rather than the richer gravies of the north.

Signature dishes include Khekda Nariyal, a sautéed crab dish finished with coconut and mustard seeds, and cafreal paneer tikka, grilled cheese in a green masala; a Thelewala Chaats section keeps street-food dishes such as pani puri and bhel puri on the menu alongside a trolley of South Indian idli and medhu vadai, including Savitri Amma's Idli, steamed rice cakes made to a family recipe.

04What to order

Start with the Pani Puri or the Kurkuri Bhindi, okra crisped in besan flour and chaat masala. From the mains, Baghari Jhinga and Goan Fish Curry represent the coastal seafood the kitchen is known for, while Martha Stewart's Favorite Murgh Malai, cream-marinated chicken finished in the tandoor, and the Lamb Madras, cooked in a hot coconut sauce, show the range between delicate and assertive. A Masala Dosa, the rice-and-lentil crepe filled with spiced potato, sambar and coconut chutney, closes the loop back to the kitchen's southern reference points; garlic naan is worth ordering on the side to see off any gravy left in the bowl.

05Wine and drinks

The bar programme is curated by Allen Katz, owner of the New York Distilling Company, and built around cocktails such as a Mango Margarita, a Himalayan Sunset and a Mojito Shaanadaar. Alongside this sits a well-curated international wine list, a run of Indian beers including Taj Mahal and Kingfisher, and mango, sweet or salted lassis that double easily as dessert.

06When to go and booking

Chola publishes lunch service Monday to Sunday from midday to 3pm, and dinner Monday to Saturday from 5pm to 10.45pm, with Sunday dinner closing at 10pm, as read on the restaurant's own website in October 2026. Given its long run of press attention and MICHELIN Guide selection, reservations are worth making ahead, particularly around the 5pm post-work sitting that draws a Midtown East crowd straight from the office towers nearby.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.