Varli Indian Street Kitchen opens in Williston Park
Butter chicken momos in a tomato makhni sauce at Varli Indian Street Kitchen in Williston Park. Credit: Newsday/Andi Berlin
The new Varli Indian Street Kitchen sure is a vibrantly colorful restaurant. The small storefront in Williston Park is decked out with vintage Bollywood posters and a wall-length mural of a woman with sultry eyes and flowing hair who stares you down while you eat butter chicken momos.
A colorful mural at Varli Indian Street Kitchen in Williston Park. Credit: Newsday/Andi Berlin
The restaurant is within a genre of keenly designed Indian street food spots that have become more common across New York City. Owner Varli Singh is an entrepreneur and a Renaissance woman of sorts, with a popular TikTok presence where she raps and stars in her own dramatic videos. Singh was born in Cairo, Egypt, but is of Indian descent, and founded Varli Magazine and a subsequent Varli Food Festival to promote Indian food culture.
Varli serves a variety of street foods and fusion dishes from across India, from samosas, pani puri wheat flour puffs, chaat dishes with colorful sauces to pav, the spiced curries served with potato bread. Most items range from $8.99 to $13.99 but are more like shareable plates than full entrees. Butter chicken momos ($11.99), one of the more popular items here, are Nepalese dumplings bathed in a buttery tomato sauce imbued with Indian spices. Another starter, Amritsari fish fry ($17.99), hails from the streets of Amritsar in Northern India. Nuggets of fish are coated in spiced chickpea flour and fried until they're crispy and snackable.
The menu also has its fair share of biryani rice dishes and curries, which are served in cute little stainless steel carriers called tiffins. A server unlocks the top of the tiffin and sets it on your table, letting the steam pour off the top. Curries run the gamut from vegetarian chickpea chana masala and yellow lentil dal tadka to chicken, lamb and even salmon curries. But the classic saag paneer ($14.99) is a comforting choice, especially when the creamy spinach is paired with a piece of fluffy garlic naan bread.
Varli Indian Street Kitchen, 78 Hillside Ave., Williston Park, 516-500-9429, varlikitchen.com. Open noon to 9:30 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, noon to 10 p.m. Friday, 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday and 9 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Sunday, closed Monday.
Andi Berlin is from Arizona and does not know where she is going. But when she gets there, she’ll find something beautiful and delicious that the world needs to taste.
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