Their playlist includes Johnny Rivers burning up his Stratocaster with Secret Agent Man. Their candlelit loo vibrates with deep, subwoofer chants that tremble your soul. Their ice-cube filled urinal is as captivating as a carnival shooting gallery, no man would disagree. So, before breakfast even starts, the landing zone is hot.

It starts catawampus with orange juice bittered by peel oil, a baffling unforced error. Righting itself instantly though, New Punjab Club’s mighty kitchen buckles down and begins to seriously deliver.

Jutting like gnarled fingers, deep-fried Pasilla and Anaheim chilies battered in chickpea flour are brought swiftly in order to reach you crisp. Chickpea batter is typically heavy and sodden, but by the addition of rice flour this batter is almost tempura light. There is a distinct, though not punishing, nip of capsaicin. Dosed by mint chutney (which they should bottle and sell), these peppers could not have sacrificed their lives for a worthier cause.

Pasilla and Anaheim chilies battered in chickpea flour with accompaniments.

With the chilies come warm, spiced peanuts. Though a small side, the kind given scant attention elsewhere, here it receives the same chefy attention as the mains. You speak with Chef Palash Mitra – thoughtful, articulate, cordial, ascended from the kitchen trenches -- and learn that they are coated in chopped Poona onions (imported from India), green chilies, dry green mango powder, salt, sugar and dried fenugreek. There is fresh lime to squeeze over. Thus a simple item becomes transcendent and puts you in danger of derailing your life through substance abuse.

There is also tamarind chutney (bottle it and sell it, please) and wonderful plugs of cold, seedless watermelon to dulcify your palate. New Punjab Club has a Michelin star and these meticulous sides are one good reason why.

House-made chai, redolent of cardamom, is served from elegant porcelain. If a snuggle could be turned into a beverage, this would be it. How can you ever drink Starbucks’ chai again after such good brew?

Makki Di Roti, Sarson Da Saag is like a hot corn tortilla but richer, topped by a green mash, a lump of butter lusciously melting, charred corn kernels, green chiles, chopped onion, and shreds of jaggery, a dark, unrefined sugar made from sugar cane. The flavors, jaggery in particular, hit unusual notes, like music played in a minor key. But what great music it is. Effulgent with corn flavor, the flatbread is made from corn kernels imported from Punjab and ground in-house. The green mash is made from mustard greens also imported from India as well as spinach and choy sum, a local green. When you think of cornmeal flatbreads, you think of Mexican tortillas. But nothing in the Mexican food vernacular is really like this. From the flatbread itself to its topping, this great dish is unto itself.

Masala Omelette, Paratha, a frittata made from regal Japanese Taiyouran eggs is brought to you sizzling and slightly overcooked on the bottom, flavored with turmeric and bits of tomato. Your wife, who demands two poached eggs on toast every Saturday and Sunday morning from her personal pool boy (aka husband) loves this. Jazzed with mint chutney (which would make flip-flops delicious) you like it, but were it not on the set menu, you’d never order it again. It needs a kick in the pants. Could they not add some cheese? Some pulled lamb? A razzle-dazzle relish? Or how about putting the omelet inside a naan? Or how about breaking a pappadam into it tableside? And why an omelet? Why not a scrambled egg breakfast burrito made with a cheese naan? Or lamb bacon, lettuce, and tomato folded into a cheese naan? These would be insane! (Designer pizzas overtook the world in the 1980’s. Why not designer naan now?) Or something else altogether.

Somewhere in this delicious onslaught a roti bread – pliable, blistered -- is served hot from the tandoor, exhaling steam. It has an incredible crumb, elastic, but taffy-like, resistant to your pull. You would welcome a dust of sea salt, but, that trifle aside, wow! On top is a particularly delicious knob of butter imported from India. Butter on hot, fresh, blistered roti is a pleasure you have never before experienced and which is now essential to your life. Chef Palash explains that this is Amul butter from Anand in Punjab, half cow, half buffalo. He uses unsalted Amul on the corn flatbread, but here it’s salted. Is there some kind of jelly, tamarind or guava perhaps, they could serve with this? Or coconut chutney? Or would this tip you into the abyss?

Your first main course is Amritsari Tawa Paneer, Soft cheese, globe artichokes, fenugreek butter. The artichoke heart and inner stem is extracted from the globe which you know, from much experience, is brutal yet delicate work that endangers your fingers and even your entire hand much like extracting your corgi from inside a crocodile. It is caramelized yet crisp, no easy balance. For lovers of the thistle it is bliss! You implore New Punjab Club to provide more than just two per plate. It needs four at least, if not six. It just does. Paneer – which New Punjab Club makes in-house from Indian buffalo milk -- is not your favorite cheese, but your wife, more inclined to mild tastes, loves it. It is served softened by heat, lightly singed. Is there no sharper cheese in the Indian pantry? There are also wonderful, lightly charred cremini mushrooms. All ingredients are coated in “gunpowder,” ground dry-roasted, spiced lentil chutney, which adds a satisfying toasty-spicy flavor and texture.

Bhuna Masala Chaanp, braised lamb ribs (really chops) served with a side of kohlrabi. Never before have you known such an exquisite cut of meat subjected to a braise. Usually these darlings would be grilled medium or medium rare. Almost any other restaurant would use a plainer cut such as lamb shoulder which would do nicely. But “nicely” is not sufficient for New Punjab Club. They’re deluxe and delicious, devoid of any excess fat or tendon, and the gravy in which they lounge is deep, slightly sweet, gently spiced, comforting.

Another flatbread arrives from the tandoor, blistered like the roti but puffier and less pliable, nubbed by sesame seeds, sheened by oil touched by cardamom, chili, and saffron. In your view, it too could use a light dust of salt. It gives off the same rhapsodic scent you get when you walk by the open door of a bakery on a spring morning. It’s perfect for dipping in this gravy or just by itself.

It gives off the same rhapsodic scent you get when you walk by the open door of a bakery on a spring morning.

Kissed by heat, the kohlrabi (so easy to overcook) is perfect. Given the stupefying complexity of their cuisine, it is remarkable how the kitchen maintains precise control over these granular details.

Your favorite main is McLeod Karhai Murgh, Three Yellow Chicken, tomatoes, sour cream. This local chicken lives up to its reputation as remarkably flavorful and juicy, on par with the premium French poulets. It comes to you bubbling fiercely in a wok within a ring of lactic braising juices caramelized on the wok’s interior which is so flavorful you scrape it off with a spoon and eat it by itself or on roti. The danger with chicken braises is that despite the liquid, the chicken, unmarbled, dries out. Not this. In order that the different cuts of chicken – breast, thigh, leg -- cook optimally, they are added at different points in the cooking process. Once more, you’re struck by the precise culinary control.

A fine meal needs the happy clutter of many dishes in just the same way that a fine family gathering needs the happy clutter of many children. There are chunks of spiced potato sprinkled with cumin seed (which you love), a timbale of lentils, one of chickpeas, and your favorite, perfectly trimmed and sliced baby carrots flash-poached along with other vegs in a splash of salt water. The carrot, sliced lengthwise and somehow peeled (it’s so small it’s hard to see how they do it), is adorably sized for a hamster. Each dish, carrot aside, is uniquely spiced, lightly tinged by capsaicin.

Which leads to gin and tonics, a cocktail evolved to go with such food. You drink the best you’ve ever had, what Zeus and Hera surely drink on Mt. Olympus, suffused with kaffir lime leaf aromatics released by torch just before serving. You love their transparent ice-cubes. You can’t say why, they’re just better than opaque. They’re served from a gin trolley. Like all successful men, you have a monogrammed hip flask, an ivory mustache comb, a zebra-hide razor strop, and a sword cane (for the inevitable duel), but no gin trolley. You badly want one.

Gin and tonic with aromatics of kaffir lime leaf and dried grapefruit.

You do think that an excellent dry Alsatian Gewurztraminer or Riesling should be available by the glass. In fact, why not a flight? That would be apt, delicious, and so classy. Inexplicably, Alsatian Gewurztraminers and Rieslings are under-represented on almost all wine lists. This should change.

Like the satisfying end to a story or symphony, a fine meal needs a satisfying dessert. Given the complexity and weight of this meal, it’s a challenge. But they stick the landing with Pista Phirni, slow-cooked ground rice, pistachio, and buffalo milk, blinged by silver leaf, hand-beaten no less. It’s a smooth pudding with an intense pistachio flavor. There is a cupola of pistachio meringue. You enjoy the textural contrasts and deep pistachio immersion.

Pista Phirni. Look carefully and you can see a bit of the silver leaf atop the pudding.

Then, like a knock at the door after all the guests have gone, another dessert arrives. You’re full and eye it warily. It’s a small cake that comes with popcorn ice cream and toffee sauce, subtle as a sumo wrestler. You pick at it but your wife goes full piranha. Perhaps it’s the salt in the cold (scrumptious) popcorn ice cream against the sweet, warm cake and toffee that frenzies her. (You say it’s banana cake. Your wife says carrot. Strife is nigh. Chef Palash re-establishes harmony by explaining it is banana-carrot. Thus, he can add “Marriage Counselor” to his job title.)

Banana-Carrot cake with popcorn ice cream and toffee sauce.

More chai is served to mollify your murmuring middle.

Service is attentive and personable though there are occasional traffic jams due to close quarters. Your server is knowledgeable about the food. This contrasts with a number of swell places in HK whose servers are woefully ignorant of the food (and even less of the drink) they serve. The servers at New Punjab Club, and all the Black Sheep restaurants you’ve been to, strike you as enthusiastic teammates, how it should be.

You’re delighted by the cutlery, specifically the knife of solid heft, made from Damascus steel. It is so finely wrought that you can actually see its grain. It must be hand washed and polished.

The playlist is fab but doesn’t include Jimi Hendrix’s Watchtower. How can this be? It is vital they add it. Little Wing too.

The meal, without drinks, gives fine value at 798 HKD plus 10% service per person.

New Punjab Club is the only Indian restaurant you know that does not use the ubiquitous Indian spice blend garam masala. Chef Palash believes that using it tends to make all Indian dishes taste too much alike. He explains that he intentionally spices his dishes mildly so the flavors of the primary ingredients shine unobscured. Waxing foodosophical, he adds: “as sorrow accentuates joy, salt accentuates sweet.”

The sourcing of ingredients astonishes: mustard greens, lemons, onions, buffalo milk, dried corn, butter, and who knows what else from India. The kitchen purchases in modest quantity and shops often in order to maximize freshness. The food is pretty, but not runway model pretty. Unlike some tony restaurants that prioritize visual Viagra, Chef Palash believes first in “flavor, then aroma, then looks.” Amen.

Some believe there is a causal link between a chef’s arm tattoos or fluorescent hair and their kitchen mojo. Chef Palash has no visible tattoos and his hair isn’t pink, nonetheless his cuisine is thrillingly original within its genre. It is the edible manifestation of great talent honed by years of hard play on the culinary pitch. Besides his food, a combobulation of fine details -- from the cutlery to the playlist to the loo to the life-altering gin-and-tonics to the service -- strongly affirm New Punjab Club’s starred stature. This restaurant is buff and powerfully dedicated to staying that way. You and your wife are powerfully dedicated fans!

In addition to numerous dinners, you’ve eaten two breakfasts at New Punjab Club. As a musician might improvise on a tune, the second breakfast was slightly different from the first. This review reflects most of the first breakfast with a detail or two from the second. Both were terrific.

Rating (on a scale of 0 to 5)

Food: 4.5

Ambiance: 4.5

Service: 5

Overall Value: 5

New Punjab Club

World Wide Commercial Building, 34 Wyndham St, Central, Hong Kong

+852 2368 1223