"There’s a place in Kips Bay where moderation is as extinct as woolly mammoths and Myspace. A place where you can sit in a mural-painted room under a thatched roof, and stare at a plastic frog in a wishing well until you’ve consumed as much gulab jamun and silky masala chai as you can fit in your body. It’s called Vatan, an amazing Gujarati-style prix-fixe restaurant where you pay $39 for three vegetarian courses, and unlimited refills. As is popular in Gujarat and other Northern Indian states, each course comes on a big metal thali with eight to ten different dishes in their own compartments. After you finish your thali, a server will ask if you want more of anything before the next course. It’s essentially an all-you-can-eat buffet in a room that looks like the set of a Tony-nominated play. I always get seconds of sev puri, ragda patis, and chole." - hannah albertine
