Kidilum
A lot for your senses.
… It’s hot out there. I feel like it was just yesterday that I was longing for summer, looking forward to the evenings in New York City where the sun sets late and I can run out to dinner in a little top and a little skirt. But then the heat came suddenly, and I spent Saturday afternoon on a friend’s patio, melting like a fallen scoop of ice cream abandoned on the sidewalk and thinking… this suffering is what I wished for.
So, I hope you’re all staying cool out there. And if you’re not… I’m unfortunately obligated to report that frozen yogurt from Myka is indeed the cure, if you’re able to survive the line. (My friend Talia and I went at 7 p.m. on a Friday, and the line was the shortest I’ve ever seen it.) I love a truly tart frozen yogurt, and my cup of their signature Greek frozen yogurt topped with praline crunch and honey was everything—compared to the other froyo places I’ve been in the city, Myka is truly the best of the best for the yogurt heads.
If eating froyo on a bench in the West Village is a quintessential summer food moment, Kidilum, a South Indian restaurant so tucked away in Flatiron that Viraj and I walked completely past it at first, is in a way, the direct opposite. Like some sort of speakeasy—or lair—Kidilum is a little bit hidden, but an unassuming door (after checking in with the host) leads to a large, dark dining room pulsing with energy. Inside the walls of Kidilum… time itself seems to cease to exist.
Kidilum is one of the latest upscale Indian restaurants to enter a crowded scene, opening earlier this year and following in the heels of probably the most popular South Indian restaurant in the city, Semma, among others. But although Kidilum serves high-quality cooking that’s undeniably “fine dining” (more on that in a second), there’s a certain unseriousness that defined my meal there—for one, Kidilum loosely translates to “beyond awesome,” and that’s just fun!
When Viraj and I were initially seated, there was a lot to take in. It was excellent people-watching (we seemed to be seated next to someone creating content for TikTok… but I can’t judge, can I…), but more than that, we could just make out the large open kitchen, and the fascinating parade of dishes coming out of it. And by dishes, here, I mean actual dishware: though nothing we ordered came in a vessel that was too unusual, they have something that is served on a glowing… rock?
I started my meal with the Kidilium Martini, because I’m nothing if not consistent. This martini, however, had raw mango brine, which made the drink not that martini-y—I could barely taste the gin—but rather sour and acidic and a little bit salty.
The struggle with going out to eat as a group of two, which is how I’m usually dining out, is that you’re limited in the number of dishes you can order to share. Viraj and I started with the chakka, crispy disks of jackfruit in a cashew sauce that had a spice that was yes, spicy, but also had layers upon layers of spice that crescendoed into a savoriness that can only be described as “that’s really fucking good.” We also ordered the pollichathu, prawns wrapped in banana leaf with onion and tomato.
The stellar jackfruit appetizer was just the start, however. Kidilum really shines in its mains, and there’s so much good stuff on the menu that I was already planning out my order for our next visit while we were there. But, for our first visit, Viraj and I ordered the ularthiyathu, a dry baby goat roast, and nanducurry, a crab curry with roasted coconut: sweet and creamy but with an extra, almost unknowable, layer of depth from the char. I’m rarely speechless, and it’s maybe because I lack the familiarity with this type of cuisine, but I truly think that these two dishes defy words. They both taste like every spice I’ve ever had mixed with all the ones I’ve never had, and yet perfectly balanced… and absolutely distinct.
With the two mains, I tried idiyappam for the first time, a bread-like object made of steamed rice flour noodles pressed into a disk, and had an extremely flakey malabari paratha—a buttery flatbread that I’m obsessed with. The thyr sadam, yogurt rice with pomegranate, acted as a palate cleanser when it all got to be too much.
There’s a lot happening at Kidilum, but at its core, the food is spectacular. At many other establishments, a little bit of kitsch might disguise the restaurant’s lack of prowess in the kitchen. At Kidilum, I might go so far as to say it’s the opposite: the novelty… well, everything… isn’t exactly my vibe.
But… I could bathe in that crab curry.
Bite It!
Book Kidilum on Resy here. They get booked up pretty quickly, but I was able to get an early (5:30 p.m.) reservation by checking periodically; They release reservations two weeks in advance at 11 a.m.