There's a particular kind of magic that happens when a restaurant stops trying so hard and just lets people eat together. At Pangat, a Maharashtrian spot in Park Slope run by chef Soham Deshpande (formerly of nearby Masalawala), that magic crystallizes during the Sunday thali lunch pop-up, where critic Mahira Rivers found herself adopted by a trio of diners and swept into the kind of conversation that unfolds naturally over shared plates.
The thali format—a set meal featuring multiple dishes arranged on a single plate—is built for this. There's inherent generosity in it, an acknowledgment that food is better with company. At Pangat, you might find yourself working through a goat thali while discussing travel, identity, and what it means to be Asian in America with people you'd never met an hour earlier. These aren't accidents. As Rivers noted, it was "exactly the kind of chance encounter that I think the team at Pangat were trying to stage."
Deshpande's food speaks the language of Western India with clarity and restraint. Vada pav arrives crispy and grounding. Butter chicken tastes like butter chicken should—rich but not cloying. Chili paneer has actual heat. Biryani comes properly spiced, each grain distinct. This isn't cuisine bent toward American palates; it's regional cooking that happens to be delicious, full stop. The restaurant's regular dinner service operates in the standard mode, but it's the Sunday thali that reveals what Deshpande and his team are really after.
Two stars from the Times carries weight, but the real story here is simpler: Brooklyn has another honest restaurant doing right by its food and its people. In a city where dining has become increasingly solitary—where a meal is often a performance for Instagram rather than an act of communion—Pangat's thali lunch feels like resistance. It's a space that understands the old truth that eating together is how we actually connect.
Go on a Sunday if you can. Sit with strangers. Let the food do what it's meant to do.