Lungi – Sri Lankan fire finds a foothold on the Upper East Side

Lungi sits in a narrow First Avenue storefront between 62nd and 63rd Streets, a corner of the Upper East Side not historically associated with Sri Lankan cooking, which makes its track record all the more notable. Before it became Lungi, the room traded as Imli, a general Indian restaurant that eventually buckled down and refocused squarely on the coastal food of southern India and Sri Lanka. Chef and co-owner Albin Vincent, who grew up in Kanyakumari with deep family ties to Sri Lanka, runs the kitchen with restaurateur Mervyn Winston as his partner in combining the two culinary traditions. In June 2026, New York Times chief critic Ligaya Mishan gave the restaurant two stars and a Critic's Pick in her first full-length review of the place, a rare mark for a restaurant that had opened only in the fall of 2024. Lungi carries a MICHELIN Bib Gourmand won in 2024 and again in 2025, making it the first Sri Lankan restaurant in New York to earn back-to-back Bib Gourmand honours, and it has since added a place on the Times' top 100 restaurant list for 2026.

01The room and the setting

From the outside, Lungi stays understated, marked mainly by bright yellow lettering that glows onto the avenue after dark. Inside, the room opens up: woven pendant lights hang above the bar, a wood-panelled ceiling runs the length of the dining room, and cane-backed chairs soften the sharper edges of the design. Towards the back, an enclosed patio fills with hanging greenery and daylight filtering through glass overhead. The look is contemporary rather than atmospheric, with no banana-leaf tablecloths or heritage signage to lean on — the visual weight is left to what arrives on the plate.

02The chef

Vincent was raised in part by his grandmother, a remarkable cook who introduced him to the intricacies of traditional Sri Lankan and Southern Indian cuisine from a young age. Rather than approximate her recipes, he executes them with precision at restaurant scale, a meaningfully different exercise from home cooking. To run both cuisines side by side, Vincent built a kitchen of specialists: Andrew Simethy focuses on Kerala dishes, a dosa expert trained at Taj Coromandel handles the hoppers and dosas, and Rushdhun Ramzy folds contemporary technique into classic Sri Lankan flavour without pulling it far from its roots.

Insider tip

Book via Resy or phone, one to two weeks ahead for weeknights; Sunday lunch means the banana-leaf feast.

03The cooking

The kitchen runs on short eats, kothu, hoppers, dosas, biryanis and karis, a sharper regional focus that is rare enough in Manhattan to make the restaurant genuinely exciting, since the island has only one other Sri Lankan address in the borough. The New York Times singled out the crisp, lamb-filled mutton rolls and the fermented-rice hoppers, alongside the Sunday banana-leaf feast and a run of well-balanced curries and chutneys. Critics have also noted that the spicing, particularly in the karis, can run heavy-handed — read as a warning or a promise, depending on your tolerance for real heat.

04What to order

Begin with short eats built for sharing: the Mutton Roll, spiced meat wrapped in a thin pastry sheet, or the Deafman Shop Tawa Fish Fry, kingfish seared in coconut oil and curry leaf and named for a stall back in Vincent's home village of Kanyakumari. The kitchen's own advice, echoed by its booking partner, is to always order extra hoppers — thin, fermented rice-and-coconut pancakes — to mop up whatever sauce is left on the plate. Pair one with the Sri Lankan Prawn Kari or the Black Short Rib Kari, or work through a plate of kothu roti, shredded paratha stir-fried with egg and vegetables. Sundays are reserved for the banana-leaf Virundhu, a feast served the traditional way, with appetiser, vegetable and non-vegetable karis, rice, biryani, pickle, poriyal, papadum and dessert. Finish with Wattalapam, a coconut-and-jaggery custard set with cardamom.

05Wine and drinks

The bar follows the same geography. The Lungi Old Fashioned swaps in jaggery syrup and cardamom bitters for a base of Redemption rye; the Ceylon mixes Ceylon arrack with coconut water and a house lime cordial; and the Malli-Rita runs tequila against roasted cumin and coriander seed. The wine list runs small but global, stretching from a Sancerre and a Gavi di Gavi to a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, alongside a short beer list that includes Kingfisher and Taj Mahal lager. Happy hour, Sunday through Thursday, brings most cocktails down to fourteen dollars.

06When to go and booking

Reservations run through Resy or by phone, and it is worth booking one to two weeks ahead for a weeknight table. The kitchen serves lunch and dinner most days and keeps Sunday for brunch through mid-afternoon, when the banana-leaf spread takes over the regular lunch menu. Since opening, Lungi has kept adding to its record: a Bib Gourmand in 2024, a repeat Bib Gourmand and a place on New York Magazine's list of the city's best restaurants in 2025, and the Times' two-star Critic's Pick in 2026.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.