Purplemint Kitchen

The mistake at Purplemint Kitchen is treating it like a curry stop. The Lundy's Lane menu runs from chaat and steamed momos through tandoor plates, dum biryani, paneer curries, a full Hakka Chinese section, and a dessert list built on kulfi and ras malai — and it rewards the table that orders across all of it rather than ordering one dish each. The clearest place to start is the Butter Chicken Daryaganj with Bone, the chef-special bone-in version named for Delhi's Daryaganj: tandoori chicken carried through a creamy tomato-and-butter sauce. Build a meal around it with garlic naan and a dal, and the rest of the menu falls into place beside it.

That depth holds up wherever you press on it. The vegetarian anchor is the Daal Makhni, black lentils simmered overnight and finished with butter, cream, and tomato — a slow-cooked centre of gravity that sits comfortably next to Shahi Paneer, Palak Paneer, and a stuffed Amritsari Kulcha. The chaat board runs through aloo tikki, bhel puri, golgappa, and dahi bhalla papdi; the tandoor turns out malai tikka, lamb seekh kabab, and a half tandoori chicken marinated overnight. Then the menu changes lanes entirely into Hakka noodles, chilli chicken, and Schezwan fried rice, with regional Indian curries — Goan vindaloo, Kerala-style Meen Moilee, Chettinad lamb — filling in around the Punjabi core.

The dum biryani section earns its own attention, layered chicken, lamb, shrimp, and a soya-chaap version cooked with saffron, fried onions, and mint. Desserts hold their end too: homemade mango kulfi laced with falooda noodles and rose syrup, ras malai, gulab jamun, and a saffron-cardamom kheer. The BaadShahi Falooda — vanilla ice cream, cold milk, rice noodle, and basil seeds — reads as a small reason on its own to leave room. Few kitchens this size bother to cook this many sections this carefully.

What that breadth signals is a place built for how people actually eat on Lundy's Lane. A solo diner can move through a samosa, a plate of chaat, and a bowl of noodles; a group can spread chaat, momos, curries, biryani, bread, and a round of mango lassi across the table and split it. The Chole Bhature carries its own clock — the menu lists it until five in the afternoon only, which makes it the rare dish here that tells you when to come. For everyone arriving later, the kitchen stays open well past the hour most Indian dinners in the city wrap up.

The chef-led backstory is the thread that keeps the menu from reading as a catalogue. The kitchen runs on a chef who came up through hotel kitchens, and that pathway lines up with what lands on the plate: the regional range, the overnight-cooked dal, the bone-in butter chicken that bothers to cite a Delhi neighbourhood by name. Purplemint is a casual restaurant and bar, with a dine-in beer and wine list — Molson and Keith's on the domestic side, Corona and Stella imported, house reds and whites from Inniskillin and Jackson Triggs — that exists for sit-down nights rather than the takeout window. Order food for pickup; save the drinks for the table.

Niagara Falls gives a restaurant two audiences that rarely overlap, and Purplemint, which opened in 2024, is set up to serve both. The Lundy's Lane address sits a few minutes off the tourist strip, close enough for a visitor who wants a real dinner after a day at the Falls, far enough that locals can treat it as theirs. Delivery, takeout, catering, and a late kitchen widen the door further. Come early and the Chole Bhature is still on; come late and the biryani and the tandoor are still going — which is the kind of range a single table can plan a whole evening around.