"The area on lower Lexington known as Curry Hill is one of the New York region’s great Indian shopping strips, of which 74th Street in Jackson Heights and Jersey City’s Newark Avenue are other examples. Founded in 1976 with a name calculated to popularize the cuisine to a wider audience, Curry in a Hurry was the original anchor of Curry Hill. This and the international food store Kalustyan’s formed a nucleus around which stores selling groceries, saris, jewelry, books, and kitchenware coalesced. Today there are around 20 restaurants on these blocks. Curry in a Hurry offers a range of Indian cuisines; indeed it was one of the earliest places in town to make South Indian uttapams and dosas. Clay-oven breads, tandoori chicken, Mughal vegetarian dishes, the occasional Gujarati choice, milk-based Bengali sweets, and mainstream curries became part of its ambitious purview. When it moved to its current corner in the early ’90s, it added an elegant upstairs dining room offering panoramic views of the neighborhood." - Robert Sietsema
