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Spice-Starved in Sag Harbor

Posted by Brian Halweil, April 16, 2008 at 11:30 AM

Brian Halweil of Edible Communities and editor of Edible East End checks in with the word from Sag Harbor, New York.

Forgive the hordes of patrons making their way to Sen Spice if they look bewildered. The new 48-seat Indian restaurant on Main Street in Sag Harbor, New York, is manna in an East End ethnic eats desert, where the closest route to Subcontinental delights is the Long Island Expressway to Hicksville or the Hampton Jitney to Jackson Heights in Queens.

But there wouldn’t be a packed room in this former lounge, which still retains its hazy, club feel, if not for the impressive and unorthodox Indian food being turned out by chef Chani Singh (right).

Mother Was a Bad Cook

This New Delhi native and self-taught chef, who says he was motivated to cook by the fact that his mother was a bad cook, and whose business travels between India, Moscow, and New York exposed him to the world’s great cuisines, insists on making everything from scratch, from the samosa to the curries to the shrimp with mango five ways. Which isn’t such an original thing for a chef to say nowadays.

But Singh is serious. The saag paneer is noteworthy for its tomato and onions and very visible spinach leaves. “Every restaurant purées it, because they are using frozen spinach. If you have access to fresh spinach you must use it because it tastes better and it’s actually easier to cook.”

With the help of a team of Burmese cooks, he makes his own roti and naan and paratha, and the restaurant just added additional ovens to accommodate the expected summer rush—not to mention the growing volume of delivery orders.

Alongside mint paratha, there’s rosemary-Parmesan naan. He slices ginger differently depending on the dish it ends up in, and it ends up in many dishes, partly because Singh considers it essential to a good dining experience. “Indian food is all about sharing, and ginger is a perfect palate cleanser so you can try something new.”

Spice and Experimentation

Or consider that he toasts all his own spices—four different toasts for cumin, four different blends of garam masala, since he says the traditional frying masks and muddles their many flavors. “I ate all over the world, but everything seemed so bland to me. It didn’t have the flavor that I knew Indian food could have. Spice is the variety of life,” he said with a slight Oxford accent. And, ever since, his cooking has aimed to showcase spice in all is many splendors.

One of Singh’s early restaurants—he has owned 19—4 Fusion on West 58th prepared all menu items four different ways, tying each together with common spices. One online review (it went out of business in June 2007) wasn’t entirely favorable but did say: “The food was delicious and imaginatively prepared.” So, even though Sen Spice provides all the standard curries, vindaloos, and biryanis, it retains an allegiance to fusion with its tandoori wings, masala crab cakes, and dry-rub baby back pork ribs with spicy mango tamarind.

“That’s what this is all about: experimentation,” Singh said. “There are traditional dishes, but everything has been tweaked. My chicken tika masala is totally different than others. I don’t use milk. I use cream. Only white meat chicken. And no tarka. People know traditional Indian food. People are bored with it.”

Singh’s most recent ventures were Chani’s and Curry Club in Islip, New York—monstrous buffet operations, where he attracted the patronage of a DJ whose brother, another fan of Singh’s cooking, also happened to be the yoga instructor of Jeff Resnick (who owns the sushi bar Sen next door). The yoga instructor, Corey De Rosa, pitched Resnick on opening an Indian restaurant, and now Singh presides over a more intimate stove and gets to spend more time with his wife and son. The venture has already attracted favorable reviews from a few top New York City chefs, including sometimes-Sag Harborite Eric Ripert, and Sen Spice’s owners are thinking of taking the Asian-fusion, veggie-friendly cuisine national.

SEN SPICE

Address: 23 Main Street, Sag Harbor NY 11963 (map)
Phone: 631-725-1774

About the author: Brian Halweil is the editor of Edible East End, the magazine that celebrates the harvest of the Hamptons and the North Fork. He is also publisher of Edible Brooklyn and Edible Manhattan. He writes about the things we eat from the old whaling village of Sag Harbor, New York, where he and his wife tend a home garden and orchard and go clamming when the tides allow.

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Tags: New York, Sag Harbor, spices