Midtown Lunch

If you work in the Financial District and have a craving for kati rolls where do you turn? Up until last week I thought the only options were a couple of carts at Liberty & Broadway – Bombay Biryany and Biryani House – where you can get street meat chicken or lamb gyro put into paratha with standard street cart sauces. The price is right at $5 or $6 for two of them, but they weren’t anything special, and I’d rather get the namesake dish or street meat from either of these carts.

Profiled Lunch’er Yury asked where to get the best kati rolls downtown, and all of the suggestions came from Murray Hill or Greenwich Village where they’re more abundant. I remembered seeing kati rolls listed on the menu at Bombay’s on Pearl St. (btw. Coenties & Broad) but hadn’t got around to actually eating one. Well, I finally did, and I don’t know if my expectations were really low, but the chicken tikka one I tried got me all kinds of excited.

You have three options for filling which are the vegetarian paneer, chicken tikka (both $8) or lamb kebab ($9). Usually when I see chicken tikka I order anything but that because I’ve only had versions that are dry, and I usually gravitate toward saucy dishes that can be dipped up with naan.

The kati rolls aren’t obvious on the menu which is dominated by steam table fare. If you’re in a hurry, I’d go with the latter and frankly what I saw going into the vegetarian steam table looked pretty damn good.

Back to the chicken kati roll. Inside was a pile of chopped up dark meat chicken tikka, shredded iceberg lettuce, some peppers and the key ingredient of peshwari chutney which is green and has a kick to it. This is all wrapped in a grilled paratha that wasn’t as greasy as the ones you get at the carts.

The chicken was so good you guys. It was juicy and nicely flavored on its own, but made great with the chutney added. This was a classier and more expensive version of the street cart model where the paratha nearly incinerated my hand with hot oil, but I would gladly pay the extra $2 and some change for the pleasure.

Based on this alone, I’m going to have to check out Bombay’s for its steam table fare. Has anyone had a really good dish here that they could recommend?

Bombay’s, 60 Pearl St. (btw. Coenties & Broad), (212) 742-2222