Kanyakumari – Union Square's coastline of South India

On East 17th Street, between Union Square West and Fifth Avenue, Kanyakumari takes its name from the fishing town at India's southern tip, where the Arabian Sea, the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean converge. It opened in January 2024 in a dining room that, only weeks earlier, had belonged to Kebaya, restaurateur Salil Mehta's Peranakan spot. Mehta, a veteran of Laut, Singapura and Wau, handed the stoves to Dipesh Shinde of Kebab Aur Sharab, turning the group's attention from northern Indian cooking to the coastal food of Tamil Nadu. It is Selected in the MICHELIN Guide, with inspectors describing a compact, contemporary room with a buzzy vibe and a bar anchoring the space, built around a kitchen unafraid of heat, salt and curry leaf.

01The room and the setting

The dining room plays against type for an upscale South Indian address: a splash of neon, a run of mismatched chandeliers and a long bar up front give Kanyakumari a low-key, unfussy air rather than a formal one. MICHELIN's inspectors call it compact but contemporary, with a buzzy energy and that bar anchoring the room behind roughly a dozen and a half tables.

Beneath the informality sits a more considered hand: diners have noted an elegant atmosphere with decor that nods, in colour and texture, to South Indian heritage, a quieter counterpoint to the room's livelier edges.

02The chef and the owner

Salil Mehta is the founder of Fungi Hospitality Group, the New York company behind Laut, Singapura and Jelas, and before Kanyakumari he had already taken the Fungi name into Indian cooking with Kebab Aur Sharab. Kanyakumari was, by his own account, a labour of love: a chance to showcase the cuisine of southern India and of the Tamil community specifically, after years spent on Malaysian and Singaporean kitchens.

Insider tip

Book directly; a no-show fee applies. Weekend brunch runs alongside dinner.

Day-to-day, the food is Dipesh Shinde's. He had run the menu at Kebab Aur Sharab, cooking the food of northern India, before Mehta asked him to turn his attention south, to the spice-forward cooking of the coast — asafoetida, curry leaf, mustard seed and dried chilli, rather than the tandoor.

03The cooking and what to order

The menu is arranged less like a conventional card than a route down the coastline, moving between Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Goa and beyond. Early reviews single out two dishes as a fair introduction to the kitchen's range: the Samrat vada pav and the Hira Anna fried chicken, both cited by MICHELIN as well-executed standouts representative of the kitchen's strengths.

For the table, there is a case for the slow-cooked Black Gold beef — tender short rib dressed with Madras onion rings, crisp curry leaf and small green chillies — and for a whole fish curry finished with ghee rice. Earlier in the meal, the thayir sadam bonda (fried curd-rice croquettes) and the mussels arrive alongside airy hoppers, best eaten with a generous spoon of Sri Lankan-style curried crab sukka. The kitchen's own description of its range also runs to a kochi vegetable stew, lacy nir dosa crepes, crab masala fry, Hira Anna fried chicken served with green mango chutney, and a baby goat biryani.

04Drinks

Kanyakumari prints its drinks list separately from the food, as its own section on the restaurant's website, alongside a dedicated brunch card served at weekends. The cocktail pages draw on the same coastal pantry as the kitchen — toddy, curry leaf, tamarind — rather than running a standard spirit-forward bar list.

05When to go and booking

The restaurant takes its own reservations rather than running through a single external platform, and tables are described as not especially hard to secure for a casual weeknight dinner.

Weekend brunch runs alongside dinner on Saturdays and Sundays, making Kanyakumari one of the few coastal South Indian addresses in Manhattan open at midday as well as at night.

06The neighbourhood

The address sits in the stretch of East 17th Street between Union Square West and Fifth Avenue, inside the same storefront that housed Mehta's short-lived Peranakan restaurant Kebaya only a year earlier. It places Kanyakumari firmly in the Flatiron and Union Square dining corridor, a short walk from Union Square itself and from several of the city's other single-region Indian kitchens that have opened in the same few years.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.