Taste the legacy
New York's Most Acclaimed Asian Restaurant
Our Story Begins In The East
Shahi Darbar cuisine consists of dishes developed in the medieval Indo-Persian world at the centres of the Mughal Empire. It represents a combination of South Asian cuisine with the cooking styles and recipes of Central Asian and Iranian cuisine. Our cuisine is strongly influenced by the Persianate and Turkic cuisine of Central Asia, the region where the early Turko-Mongol Mughal emperors originally hailed from, and it has in turn strongly influenced the regional cuisines of modern Northern India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
The tastes vary from extremely mild to spicy and are often associated with a distinctive aroma and the taste of ground and whole spices.
It is said that Mumtaz once visited the army barracks and found the Mughal soldiers looking weak and undernourished. She asked the chef to prepare a special dish that combined meat and rice to provide balanced nutrition to the soldiers – and the result was the biryani of course!