When you dish upon a star
Launching a fancy restaurant drenched in global star power is no picnic in a pandemic.
Sona at 36 E. 20th St., drawing on the popularity of its creative consultant Priyanka Chopra Jonas, opened yesterday under still-tight restrictions. Even so, Sona’s majority owner Maneesh Goyal, operating partner David Rabin and chef Hari Nayak take the plunge confident in their mission.
“I was concerned, of course,” Rabin said, about the timing. But he cited the booming success of American Bar, a place he recently launched in the West Village.
Restaurants owned by celebrities can be fiascos, like Britney Spears’ laugh-riot, short-lived Nyla or long-running hits, like Robert De Niro’s Nobu. Rabin said he yearned to create a place that would do “what Nobu did for Japanese food.”
Chopra Jonas got the eatery itch on top of a career that’s included acting, writing a best-selling memoir and wedding pop star and actor Nick Jonas. She has been ranked among the world’s most influential people by Time magazine and Forbes. But her role at Sona is harder to pin down.
“Her fingerprints are all over Sona,” Goyal said. Her role is to “make the space, the food and the music a global Indian experience.”
The Indian-born Nayak exemplifies the globetrotting, entrepreneurial toque — he’s launched restaurants everywhere from Bengaluru, India, to Hoboken, NJ, and authored seven cookbooks.
As Goyal recalled, the star said she’d get involved, but “not until I try the food. And then I want my mom to try the food.” They arranged for a tasting — and Sona was born.
Although the food wasn’t available to critics to taste before the opening, it sounds like India’s greatest hits, as tweaked by Nayak with a few of Chopra Jonas’ personal favorites.
“A dish with Portuguese influence from Goa, street food, butter chicken from the north,” Goyal said. Small plates are to include goat cheese and spinach samosas with red chili dip, popcorn prawns with mango pickle aioli and tandoor roasted beets.
Goyal noted there will be more seasonal variations that are usually found in Indian restaurants, but he stressed, “It is Indian — not fusion.”