Latest update: Junoon has been rated as one star Michelin restaurant for 2016.

Last Friday we decided to go for dinner at Junoon, one of NYC finest Indian restaurants, as my sister-in-law was heading back to India and we wanted to celebrate her visit. Me and wife had previously dined at Junoon in August and found their food to be really good. Junoon has two dining areas – Patiala room and Main Dining hall. The key difference between the two is – you can order a-la-carte in Patiala room while enjoying your drinks, whereas you only have the option of tasting menu or ordering a 3 course meal when seated in the Main Dining Hall. Please make sure you select the dining areas when you make the reservations.

We made our reservations for main dining area for 8:30pm and I had put in a request to have a Bon Voyage cake to be brought to our table after the meal was over. We were a few minutes late, however, we didn’t have to wait for long to be seated. The seating provided to us was next to a pillar, with not enough space between pillar and the chair from the next table. Since we are vegetarians, we didn’t have a lot of options to choose from – 4 appetizers and 5 main course items between the 3 of us were the only choices which we had. We ordered our food and were happily chatting away when our first course of meal – appetizers arrived. We had ordered Lasooni Gobi, Eggplant chat and Lal Mirch Paneer, along with beer for me. The Paneer and Eggplant chat were really good, however, the Lasooni Gobi could have been better and we told the server about the same. We had finished our appetizers and waitstaff started to clear off these super heavy plates. As mentioned above, we were seated next to a pillar with not enough space between our table, the pillar and chair from the next table. The waitstaff who was holding the empty plates in her hand, was not able to balance the load of the plates properly and off came everything. The plates fell down and along with it took my glass of beer and water. As luck would have it, the beer and water fell on my jeans (in areas that cant be described here) causing embarrassment to me and the staff person who started apologizing profusely, whereas my wife and my sister-in-law started laughing after seeing wet patches on my jeans. We told the staff person to not worry about what has happened. My wife and sister-in-law even went to the extent of hugging her to make her feel comfortable.

The staff did ensure that they made up for this incident by providing additional dishes – so we were given an extra appetizer, daal, two vegetarian main courses, and curd raita. Just looking at all that much food, we were half full and I even protested about the quantity of additional food they were bringing to our table. However, the server was like don’t worry – you don’t have to cook for tomorrow. The food as usual was awesome and tasty. Our meals were followed with desserts, which were good too. The Mango Lassi and Chocolate were really good, however, the kulfi could be better. With the desserts done, the server asked if he should get the cake and I said yes. However, they got us chocolate with a candle in it and Happy Birthday written on the plate, instead of Bon Voyage and we were like okay – this isn’t what we asked for.  Apparently the chocolate mousse was over, so we had to make do with a chocolate bar (which the server once again apologized for). Also it seems that there was miscommunication, which resulted in incorrect message on the plate. Not knowing if we were going to get the message changed, we decided to have the chocolate bar, wished my sister-in-law a wonderful happy birthday in advance.However, the server was nice enough to get another plate with Bon Voyage written in chocolate syrup along with chocolate bar and marsh mellows in the plate. We had the chocolate bar (again) and called it an evening.

Inspite of some goof ups, it was an awesome evening full of fun and laughter. Thanks Junoon for the memories.