Gazab

Regionality held at the pass

Vamshi Adi keeps regional Indian cooking in motion as chef and founder of Gazab on the Lower East Side, New York City. The decision at this bench is not to flatten India into a single menu language. It is to let memory, geography, and technique stay visible in the food, even inside a casual downtown room built for small plates and a la carte eating. Adi’s discipline began at the Culinary Academy of India in Hyderabad, where he studied from 2013 to 2016 before entering American kitchens. He worked as a culinary intern at The Dewberry in Charleston, then as a cook at Baar Baar in New York City, Chef de partie at Junoon in New York City, and chef at Rooh in Palo Alto. Gazab opened in 2021 with Adi as founder, making authorship part of the restaurant from the beginning. His later work as Executive Chef and founder of Ishq continues the same thread: regional Indian cuisine treated as a living archive, carried through service by repetition, judgment, and the hand.

Curries, street food, and the long memory of place

The kitchen at Gazab works in a traditional frame without turning tradition into a museum piece. Parsi Lamb Salli Boti sits beside Chicken Tikka, Gobi Manchurian, and Butter Chicken, a range that places curries, tandoor-rooted cooking, and Indian street food classics on the same pass. The format matters. Small plates allow the meal to move by contrast: heat, smoke, acidity, softness, crunch. A dish such as Parsi Lamb Salli Boti carries the memory of a specific community; Gobi Manchurian carries the Indian Chinese register that lives through canteens, street stalls, and family orders. Butter Chicken asks for restraint because familiarity can dull the cook’s attention. Gazab’s method, as publicly stated, is traditional, but Adi’s biography gives that word a sharper edge. His work is described through preservation and celebration of Indian culinary traditions, with continuity treated as a working principle. At this restaurant, the craft is not novelty for its own sake. The discipline is keeping each dish legible while letting it belong to New York service.

A small room with a lively counter rhythm

The room is lively and casual, with a come-as-you-are ease that suits families, friends, and a Lower East Side night that does not require ceremony. Gazab is small in scale, and that changes how the craft reads. The pass is close to the dining room’s energy; plates move into conversation rather than into hush. In that setting, Adi’s cooking has to hold its shape against noise and appetite. Technique cannot depend on quiet. The plate has to arrive with its own clarity.

Authorship that moved from one address to the next

Gazab matters in Adi’s sequence because it is where founder became part of his public title. The restaurant opened in 2021, after posts at Baar Baar, Junoon, and Rooh, and before the current authorship he carries at Ishq. That path gives Gazab a particular place in the lineage: it is not only a restaurant in the record, but the first named house where his own frame came forward. Gazab serves Parsi Lamb Salli Boti.