Graffiti Food & Wine Bar

Interesting meal — good to try once, but I don’t think I’m going to be a regular at this place.
Tiny cramped place — this place takes «packing you in» to another level! Combine that with communal tables, and it means you should not expect a relaxed dining experience from this place. It feels a little stressful with people constantly bumping into each other, elbows clashing with fellow diners, reaching over strangers to reach your plates/​drink glasses, uncomfortable stools to sit on, and no place to hang bags/​coats.
Food is interesting —
Some of the fusion combinations really hit the bulls eye, e.g., green mango paneer (not really fusion at all, but good nonetheless), portobello gratinee (my favorite part of the meal).
Others miss the mark, e.g., zucchini hummus pizza (there was something missing in terms of tying it together, and you can’t really taste the hummus), the vegetable dumplings are a bit dry and lack flavor.
Service is very friendly though, and the one single cocktail on the menu (prosecco lychee martini) is good.

Really delicious food. Space is extremely cramped and menu is a bit limiting. I dined here last weekend with a party of 6 and all of us thoroughly enjoyed the eclectic menu options.
The food itself is worthy of five stars, however, to describe the space as cramped would be a gross understatement. While I was with family and friends dining shoulder to shoulder isn’t the worst thing, but there is also not a chair with a back in the entire establishment. It struck me as almost worryingly cramped or illegal in the event of a fire.
The redeeming factor was definitely the food. Everything is served tapas style and is really delicious. My favorite offerings were the pickled ginger scallops with candied red chili, which offered a brilliant combination of heat and sweet. The pork buns were some of the best bao I’ve ever had, and the eggplant buns were a nice deviation from the standard bao and were really delicious. Other dishes were very good but also very spicy. My least favorite offerings were the desserts (if you want to do dessert here just stick to the cheese plate that is very very good!) and the ginger chicken noodles that left lemongrass in the dish that was truly inedible.
I do not recommend this restaurant to anyone who has a physical disability or trouble walking as I truly do not think you will be able to dine here. Additionally, the restaurant does not list all of its ingredients in its descriptions on the menu so be very cautious if you suffer from allergies.
The food is excellent and spicy and also an amazing value for New York. If you’re young, food-​loving, and looking for something different this is one of my top choices for the city.

Great food for tapas! Place is really small and is communal seating. the pork buns are amazing!

I would give 3.5 but flatness of dishes tended it to 3. The restaurant is a pretty small (hole in the wall types) place. Its neat and clean and the servers are really nice.
We were seated in a corner table with slightly uncomfortable stools while a party of 2 was seated in a much larger table (probably expecting more people??).
The food was interesting and quirky at the same time. However some dishes really fell flat in flavor.
Prosecco lychee martini: delicious, i love sweet and strong cocktails!
Potato stir fry: good, a bit too many onions and less potato was tasted nice.
Vegetable dumplings: average, my least favorite dish of the day. The dumkings barely had any filling and the grapefruit relish was not enough.
Zucchini pizza: good however I got Weird after taste and some zucchini was cold.
Indian street burger: my favorite and really gooood. If i return, i would only get this. Thought they could have served more fingerling potatoes.
Pork /​eggplant buns: the eggplant version was average however my friend told me that the pork version was amazing. Other diners also said that it was the best dish of the day for them.
The restroom is through the kitheb and was a turn off point on how small it was. They can probably reduce tables and make the restaurant more breathable. I wonder how would it be on a weekend/​full night.

I’ve been to Graffiti a few times and it’s definitely a unique experience, in both a positive and negative way. I think 3.5 stars would be appropriate if I could have rated the half star. The food is overall quite good but your experience depends upon who is sitting around you, given the communal tables (see below)
(+)
— I’m vegetarian, and there were multiple, tasty options on the menu — in fact, there’s a separate menu you can ask for, which makes it easier to select dishes.
— the wine list is decent, with enough options both by the glass and bottle. Some wines were good, others were oxidized.
— the Green Mango paneer is really tasty. Not complex to make, basically Indian mango pickle mixed with paneer and served with toasted pita, but it’s yummy.
— the zucchini hummus pizza with wasabi is pretty good, flaky and crunchy in texture — a little flat in flavor, some acidity or a touch of tang would do it wonders.
— there used to be a watermelon mint dish that we loved — simple but fresh and a great way to start the meal.
— the Indian street burger was good — tasty lentil patty with a chipotle sauce and fries on the side.
(-)
— the top negative here is the seating arrangement. I like communal tables like at Le Pain Quotidien, but this is different, and designed more to optimize space and table turnover than for the quaint customer experience. Strangers are seated together at square counter height tables of 8 with stools. When we sat next to other couples who didn’t know each other, it was fine, as everyone had their own conversations and it didn’t feel as intrusive. When it was us surrounded by a party of 6, who loudly talked to each other over us and rudely kept bumping us to hang their coats one after the other as they walked in over a 20-​min span, we couldn’t wait to leave and possibly not ever return — at least not without a reservation at the smaller tables.
— the eggplant buns were nothing to write home about — I’d have paired the eggplant with something crunchier and stronger in flavor, as the spongy buns with mushy eggplant that was mildly flavored weren’t too impressive.
— the warm truffle almond pepper ice cream dessert didn’t quite work. Truffle oil should be used sparingly as it dominates the flavor of the dish and feels «cheap» when it’s so strong, vs. offering just a hint of a rich flavor. The pepper ice cream didn’t go well with the rest of the flavors — felt pretentious.
Overall I think fondly of my experiences at Graffiti, but maybe Chef Mehta should experiment with a longer communal table so guests are not overpowered by other loud, rude patrons crowding over you in an already compact environment.

You’ve gotta be kidding me. Communal tables, but they don’t bother telling you this. Even so, the tables are way too small, there are stools, no chairs, and the ambiance sucks. The owner must have written all the Zagat reviews. Imagine eating I your closet with a bunch of strangers. That’s Grafitti!

I can’t imagine a more uncomfortable restaurant. You sit with a bunch of strangers at tables that are way too small for the number of chairs. The place is smaller than my bathroom. While the food may be okay, the ambiance is definitely not! Before booking this restaurant, ask yourself whether you’ll enjoy cramped space, strangers invading your personal space, uncomfortable stools and the worst ambiance you could possibly imagine. If the answer is this is yes, this is the place for you!

Eating elbow to elbow definitely has its time and place: In a Singaporean hawker center where you’re paying $ 5 for a giant plate of chilli crab — An Experience; at a restaurant where you’re shelling out $ 40+/person — An Annoying Experience. That latter was how I found dining at Graffiti — a tiny, much lauded, «Indian-​inspired» restaurant in the East Village that can comfortably seat about 10 but chooses to uncomfortably seat twice that amount.
The food is flavorful and (mostly) well cooked but honestly nothing anyone with a knowledge of Asian flavors would find eye opening or noteworthy. And while, the service is both gracious and engaging, they are clearly trained to move diners in and out — to make way for the next group of diners to cram in.
The Green Mango Paneer ($ 9) tasted like… paneer with maybe a slight tang. The stack of toasted, seasoned flatbread strips it was served with were way more exciting in flavor. The scallops ($ 12) were nicely seared but sliced so thin… ahem skimpily… that they couldn’t really stand up to the assertive sauce that topped them. They too were served with the same flatbread — something we wish the waiter would have warned us about but hey ho — guess we’ll just treat the increasing pile of starch as our complimentary bread basket!
The Graffiti Burger ($ 17) was fine — nice, juicy with a good sear. It’s apparently designed to pack an umami punch — which may have been really exciting say… a few years ago — in this day and age of big flavor, it proved to be fairly forgettable. Forgettable however was definitely preferable to distinctively greasy which is how I found my Chickpea crusted skate ($ 17). Breaded and deep fried within an inch of its life, the fillet left an oily smear on the plate and down my throat with each bite.
For me, Graffiti exhibits a kind of fancy fusion cuisine, I personally hate the most. It’s the kind that reduces the food to ethnically-«inspired» flavors that are really all cliches and packages it all within an imported décor that’s just oh so carefully manipulated exude a slap dash quality. The curated casualness, the high-​low schtick. But brush away the sprinkle of exotic glitz and there’s hardly anything about Graffiti that is spontaneous or surprising or… inspired.

Food:
The Green Mango Paneer was mind blowing. The vegetable burger is one of a kind — Excellent. The vegetable dumpling is superb.
Place:
Small place. 6 tables only. Most of the tables are communal.
They have a separate Vegetarian Menu. The service is super fast. You can finish your dinner in 20 mins if you have to — all 3 courses. The quantity is just enough. You will be full and the food won’t go waste.
Also free wine if its your birthday or your anniversary. Great!

Definitely very small, interesting food — big on ginger — a kind of nouvelle Indian. It was great fun, innovative food, and definitely not for the traditional. If I were still single, this would be a place to bring a date, intimate, smart, and fun. Easy to talk. Subdued lighting.

It’s all about the texture and the taste at this Asian-​inspired French/​American restaurant.
I came here with my hubby and sister-​in-​law and was pleasantly surprised by this small, cozy restaurant. I don’t think that more than 20 people fit at the community-​style tables.
Service was outstanding. We enjoyed a few bottles wine (I believe that all of their wine options are 35 bucks a bottle and pretty decent) and our glasses were never empty and we never felt rushed during dinner (we dined for 3 hours).
I absolutely love the concept of small plates and sharing dishes. We enjoyed the three cheeses appetizer served with guava paste, pickled ginger scallops (which were out-​of-​this-​world), coconut ginger chicken noodles, braised lentil short ribs, and the hazelnut caviar chocolate cupcake for dessert.
Graffiti is definitely a gem and I would highly recommend this restaurant for those looking for an «experience.»

It is a cozy place (tiny), they mix different style which will surprise you.
However I was a little bit disappointed by their white wines as they were too cold and their appetizer (we tasted only the three cheese) had too small portion of cheese.
You might need a reservation if you want to come here ;)

The place is tiny and has a communal table policy that it takes seriously. What this means is that if you are a party of 6 already seated on a table that’s supposed to seat 8, they will make sure that the next couple that walks in will be seated on your table. It doesn’t matter that there are three empty tables that can seat 2 or more people.
While the food is different, I wouldn’t call it innovative, the pretentious seating policy and indifferent service means that the overall dining experience will be sub-​par, definitely when compared to the above-​par tab.

The following is a review for «Me And You: A Private Experience by Jehangir Mehta,» which is a prixe-​fixe style private dinner that Graffiti offers.
So basically, we coordinated via email to arrange our reservation, which was made unnecessarily complicated and difficult for no reason. We had to go back and forth many times, almost pleading with them to finally secure the time we wanted, and then it turned out to be no problem for them to accommodate us at that time, begging the question of why it was so hard in the first place. Now all of that would not have been so bad if not for the $ 33 «Coordinator Fee» that they tacked onto our bill…
The dinner was located in a quaint, homey dining room located adjacent to Graffiti. Chef Mehta cooked our meal right there in a kitchen and it felt like a warm meal at home.
Well, warm for a moment. Then cold. Then warm again for a second, then cold again. This was because the door to the dining room, which led directly out onto the street, kept opening. And closing. And opening. And closing. Waiters and busers apparently needed to access the kitchen in our dining area or something. So it felt like a sometimes warm meal at home… if your home has a constant flow of busy strangers walking in and out of the room. Please note that Chef Mehta only offered a cursory apology for the inconvenience of having our «private“meal frequently interrupted by bustling staff members, and mumbled something about the door being usually closed… But he didn’t seem sorry in the slightest.
In fact, Chef Mehta was one of the most disappointing aspects of this meal. One would expect that for a $ 85/​person, customized, private dining experience with a chef, he would strive to make his guests feel comfortable, attended to, satisfied, at ease. If I was a chef in that scenario, I would bend over backwards to make my guests happy while maintaining a courteous professional demeanor. Which is not to say Chef Mehta did the opposite. He just came across as generally annoyed, rude, irritable and unfriendly. I got a gruff response when I asked if I could use the bathroom, or when I asked for my umbrella back. This man did not seem to understand the implications of the peaceful, wholistic, comfortable dining experience that he was promising.
And truthfully, I felt like this whole dinner was more about the chef and his associates making money than it was about providing a memorable dining experience. To be blunt: my friends and I felt RIPPED OFF.
I would not make such a claim without grounds, so take the following into account.
1. After being promised we would NOT be taxed twice for the charge of the initial deposit and the final bill… We were taxed twice for the charge of the initial deposit and the final bill.
2. We completed an extensive and creative survey in advance so that Chef Mehta could cater the dinner specially to us. Sounds lovely, right? Wrong. We were served several dishes and foods that we had explicitly indicated in our surveys that we did NOT eat. One of our number wrote that she did not eat salmon. The second course was salmon. Another friend wrote that she did not eat duck or beef. The third course was duck. The fourth course was beef. Another friend wrote that she did not want chocolate. The duck came with chocolate. Oh and that dish was not at all the inventive, interesting dish it sounds like. It was literally roasted or grilled duck, and a smear of dark chocolate sauce. It tasted weird at best, like a savory desert you regretted ordering. The survey was a good thought, and I appreciate Chef Mehta trying to customize a dinner for us, but it felt like he just used the ingredients he happened to already have from the survey, but then totally did his own thing.
3. He asked one of us if we wanted sparkling or still water. We all had to specify tap, but this friend thought that «still» meant tap. Our mistake? Sure. The price of that glass of still water? $ 7
4. He offered us tea at the end of the meal, in such a way that it sounded complimentary. The price of a cup of tea? $ 6
5. The food was good not great, the presentation was basic, and we got very little of it. I would have paid $ 35 for this dinner, including wine. The price I paid for this dinner? $ 122
6. We asked for a bill at the end of the meal. Chef Mehta went through the motions of preparing it, then claimed he could not give us a bill, because they were just going to email it to us the next day due to how their system works mumble mumble bullsh*t bullsh*t. What a convenient way to avoid having to account for egregious charges on the bill to your dissatisfied customers. We got the bill via email, voiced our obvious protestations to what they had charged us… And were promptly dismissed, given trivial «thank you for the feedback» responses that suggested this restaurant did not care in the slightest about the impression they had left on their customers.
Which is all to say: DO NOT TRY THIS PLACE. EVER.

Explosions of flavor in my mouth! This place is amazing. We’ve done the foodie tour and this spot «trumps» them all.
Green mango paneer to start — amazing flavor and the cheese was perfect. Zucchini hummus pizza had the perfect zest with a little kick from the wasabi beans. The pastry crust was a surprising addition.
The black angus sliders topped it all off. Amazing taste!
THIS IS THE SPOT!

Really cute little (emphasis on little) place. If you’re with a friend or group that is extroverted and comfortable making friends with neighbors, this is a VERY cool place. Food is great, served tapas style with a creative menu that changes somewhat frequently. The service is great, as are the drinks. It’s definitely an experience worth having and I would encourage anyone that doesn’t mind intimacy to check it out!
Portions are small (tapas) but the prices are reasonable for the area/​quality of ambiance. Not for everyone considering how on top of eachother you will be with both your party and adjacent parties, but I always enjoyed going. When I lived in the East Village, it was one of the 2 – 3 places I would take people regularly.

First of all please note the only reason this place is not getting 5 stars is because I have reserved those for the absolutely mind altering meals where I have broken into tears from joy and euphoria, yes that’s happened before.
This place is absolutely remarkable in every sense of the word. It is a tiny place first off, with enough people to seat a dozen and a half total which means you may end up with someone else, happened to me. However the owner, host Jehangir eases every guest and helps build the warmth to enjoy meals in company of strangers.
The décor is extremely eclectic leaning towards Indian artifacts and design. Very dim lit and warm glow inside.
The service here is absolutely impeccable and very observant.
For example Jehangir took note I was there by myself so brought over some books in case I choose to not engage strangers at the table. He then noticed I had ordered to vegetarian dishes with my server so came over and asked if I was vegetarian and gave me a vegetarian menu. Amazing attention.
The food was on point. I started with the eggplant humus pizza. Flaky khari (type of indian cookie) crust topped with a layer of eggplant goodness with thinly sliced cucumber. Just a splendid combination of flavors.
I then had the chili dumplings which were also very good but a point score below the pizza. The sauce itself is flavored well.
I then got the eggplant buns, think of bow buns with modified bharta (an Indian eggplant dish), baked and then mixed with wonderful spices of eggplant heaven. This was my favorite dish there.
I ended my meal with the peppermint ice cream and strawberries. I was left with more strawberries so could have used some more ice cream. Otherwise a stellar dessert.
I will go back for the food but mostly for how I was treated. This place just raised the bar of service to a new level.

I recently when back to this restaurant, having not been in several years. The venue is just as quaint as before and the menu is very unique and updated regularly. Not a good place for large groups or if you want a very private dinner.
Really only good for small parties (4 or less) and on a weeknight to avoid a long line. I tried the following:
Starters
Chili pork dumplings — the grapefruit is a nice touch
Coconut Ginger Chicken Noodles — these tasted like really good thai food
Mains
Braised pork buns — very nice, but not as good as Momofuku
Duck Portobello Gratinee, Mustard Onion Confit — I preferred this over the pork buns
If you happen to be in the east village, definitely pop in, You will not be disappointed.

This place is really small, can maybe fit a max of 20 people, so definitely get a reservation. I happened to get lucky and just walk by on a Tuesday evening and there happened to be a table.
Graffiti has a really unique fusion-​style menu, along with $ 35 & $ 55 per bottle wine choice. We got a bottle of Perrin Reserve, Grenache-​Syrah-​Mourvedre which ended up going well across the different foods we ordered…
Pickled Ginger Scallops, Candied Red Chilli: The ginger and nut on top of the scallop was a nice contrast, the candied red chili seems to go better with the Naan toast, given the scallops already had plenty of flavor.
Braised Pork Buns, Apricot Chutney: Awesome, hit the spot. A nice take on the traditional chinese roast pork steamed bun. These actually came out more like tacos, so you could put in as much or a little of the chutney as you wanted. The pork itself had a nice spicy BBQ flavor.
Warm Truffled Almond Strawberries, Pepper Ice Cream: This was the only item I was less than impressed. The truffle didn’t really add much, it actually took away from the strawberry and ice cream. It was black pepper on top of the ice cream which didn’t really do it for me. I was thinking it would be a crushed red pepper heat, or maybe even green chili as the «pepper». Black pepper didn’t really mesh well with the ice cream.
Overall, cool place and I’d go back to try some of the other items on the menu.

Came here on Wednesday night for an impromptu dinner with a friend –thankfully it was not packed.
The place is very tiny, three tall top tables that seat two people on each side. It’s family-​style/​communal seating so they can get up to eight people at each table. The restaurant really only holds 24 people but that’s packed!
I would definitely recommend making a reservation!
For drinks they have an awesome. fairly decently priced wine selection.
The service was awesome! The girl that worked there was really sweet and knowledgeable. She really helped us with our food & wine selections.
For appetizer we have the green mango paneer. This dish was really creative Bread that came with was super tasty! It had some nice herbs in the bread, and then the mango spread itself was awesome flavor. Great way to start the meal– very creative.
For the main course we had duck that was cooked to perfection served over a spicy goat cheese and roasted Portabella mushroom –it was delicious! I wanted to lick the plate. It was a very very tiny portion.
We also had some noodle dish with chicken it was just okay –it was super sweet and a little bit thick –I would skip that.
For dessert we actually had a cheese plate –which was awesome! Nice selection of cheeses, nuts, & jam –very tasty.
Overall it was an awesome meal! I would definitely recommend going here! As it is a very tiny place only small groups –unless you want to fill the table with 8ppl.