Loud, Crowded, Grease-Stained, and Gloriously Drunk: Where the World Eats After Hours
"Punjabi is, as advertised, a deli. It’s narrow and scanty and wedged somehow, in only-in-New York fashion, beneath a run-of-the-mill apartment building. But it’s open 24 hours, and the walls are lined with genuine deli-style grocery items like dried lentils, whole spices, and Halls cough drops. Cases of Gatorade and seltzer have been tucked wherever they’ll fit. Flashily colored bags of namak para, sesame and peanut chikki, and a bewildering range of Indian snacks line the wall behind the counter, where a small, friendly crew spoons vegetarian stews and curries over bowls of rice that’ve been warmed in a microwave. This place is many things to many people. Some drivers swing through just to hit the restroom, head back to their cabs without even the pretense of a purchase. Kids, drunk and rowdy, line their stomachs with the cheap and tasty: basmati rice, dal, saag (which, bless them, tastes like it was made with just as much garlic as spinach). Some drivers roll up in a leisurely frame, stretching their legs and lingering in hopes that a friend or familiar face will show up to chat. Some hunch in their cabs to eat, others on benches. But most everybody, driver or not, leaves with a chai. $1.50 gets you a cup of the stuff (look for 'Indian Tea' on the menu). A tea bag joins ginger, cinnamon, sugar, whole spices, and milk in a classic anthora cup that’s then plunged beneath the steam wand of an espresso rig that’s already seen plenty, but appears game for more. The result is creamy and spicy, and somehow invigorates even as it comforts. The busiest hours at Punjabi run 9 p.m. to 1 a.m., but as the night gets deeper the mix of patrons skews more and more to drivers. By 4 a.m. even that scene’s on the wane. One man, waking from a nap, groggily finishes his half-eaten samosa. An NYU freshman wearing a glow-stick necklace gets a friend to take her picture in front of 'the place that smells like home.' On the stoop above, a couple argues; and a woman on one of the benches crumples dollar bills into her wallet, then lowers her face into the steam of her curry. A twenty-something gracelessly weaves his way to a cab. He demands a ride. The driver waves him away, more weary than impolite. He takes a sip of his chai, cuts across four lanes to turn eastbound onto Houston past the stained glow of Katz’s, and heads home."
