CITY GUIDES | NEW YORK
Drāvida Review: Big Heat, Deep Flavor in the East Village
After years cooking in some of the city’s biggest kitchens, Aarthi Sampath opens an East Village restaurant built around her travels.
★★★★☆
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By Dana Somerstein | June 27, 2026
AUTHOR BIO: Dana Somerstein’s passport is stamped with perfect pizza slices, delicate dumplings, and buttery baked goods. When she’s not chasing her next reservation, she practices real estate and banking law as a partner in Fort Lauderdale.
There’s a difference between opening a restaurant and opening something that feels deeply personal. At Drāvida, chef Aarthi Sampath has clearly done the latter.
The East Village newcomer is Sampath’s first brick-and-mortar restaurant, but she’s hardly new to the industry. Sampath spent more than a decade cooking in New York, including stints at Junoon, The Breslin, and Rainbow Room, and also appearances on “Chopped” and “Beat Bobby Flay.” Now, Drāvida feels like the place where all of that experience finally lands. It’s a restaurant years in the making: a concept she brought to life with a menu centered on South Asian diaspora cooking and the cultural overlaps that come with migration.
And that intention is obvious from the incense in the air the second you walk in. Sampath told me when she first saw the space “it was a blank white box.” With the help of a friend, she transformed it into something warm and inviting—soft lighting, a hand-built bar, layered textures, and a kitchen centered on an open-flame oven. It’s intimate, a place you can sit and stay awhile.
That same energy carries into the food. The menu pulls from across India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Trinidad, and beyond, but it doesn’t feel scattered. Instead, it feels like a conversation between places. The doubles set the tone immediately: chickpeas layered between fried flatbreads with grilled pineapple bringing sweetness upfront, followed by herbs and a slow-building heat that sticks around without blowing out your palate. It’s balanced, messy in the best way, and impossible not to keep picking at.
Next was the basil chicken kofta. Crisp and tender kofta balls floating in a nutty curry base with mango to sweeten the dish. The sweet potatoes were one of the surprise standouts. Creamy without falling apart, warm and comforting, with enough spice to keep things interesting. The melted cheese rounds it out, adding richness and pulling the sweet and heat together.
Chicken kofta
The Guyanese lamb chop goes bigger: allspice-forward, fiery, and grounded by bhaji, bitter greens that cut through the richness. Tamarind-heavy shallots on the side brought acid, sweetness, and just enough heat to sharpen every bite. The coconut rice cuts the heat that still may leave your lips tingling, or as my sister Jamie said, “feeling like she had just gotten lip injections.”
Guyanese lamb chop
Doubles
We rounded out all this spice and heat with something cool and comforting: black rice milk soft serve, only mildly sweet with a nutty flavor. It’s balanced and elevated by a fruit compote that adds brightness without taking over. The rice puffs give it texture and, in the right bite, almost mimics the crunch of a sugar cone.
At Drāvida, the details matter because they’re personal. From the room to the menu, you can feel how much of Sampath’s story is present. And for a first opening, that kind of clarity, of vision, flavor, and purpose is what makes it worth paying attention to.
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