Only One New Jersey Restaurant Made The New York Times 2025 Top 50

Every year, the New York Times releases its "America's Best Restaurants" list, in which it highlights 50 of the country's most exciting eateries, broken down by the states in which they are located. For its 2025 list, only 33 of the country's 51 (including the District of Columbia) made the cut. Missing from the list are restaurants in the states of Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, and Washington. Many states made the list with just a single restaurant. One such example is New Jersey, and the featured eatery is a surprising choice on paper: Chatpati Delhi, located in Franklin Park.

This modern but traditional Indian restaurant opened in 2023 and leans heavily into street food preparations and tasty bites, as well as local favorites from Mumbai. What makes this choice surprising is the fact that it's located in a New Jersey strip mall, and its vibe is casual — no bizarre fine-dining etiquette rules to learn, like how to hold your glassware.

The New York Times picking a strip-mall, casual-dining Indian joint for its 2025 top 50 restaurants in America might not have been on our bingo card for the year, but it certainly was on the bingo card for anyone who has actually eaten there. Indeed, the eatery, which is owned by husband and wife duo Hema Singh and Jimmy Poonawalla, currently holds a 4.5 out of 5-star rating on Yelp, and a 4.7 out of 5-star rating on Google. People rave about the authenticity of the food, including its chaat (of which there are 20 varieties), golgappa, which is a famous street food in Delhi, and chole bhature, one of seven snacks listed on the menu. 

Chatpati Delhi's menu is expansive, filling two pages with three columns each, and covering everything from biryani, to thalis, to curries (which are very different from the Japanese versions), to lassis. Further, the restaurant's presentation of its meals is thoughtfully arranged, and despite its strip-mall digs, it has a busy, yet welcoming interior.

But of course, there are two parts to any restaurant: Back of house, which makes the food, and front of house, which serves it. And in the case of Chatpati Delhi, the service also shines, with words like "attentive" and "friendly" repeated again and again in reviews.