Zohran Kwame Mamdani, New York’s 34-year-old mayor-elect, has tightened his belt to step into his new role by kick-starting his first day after the historic win with some Indian lunch with Democrat firebrand Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The Indian-origin politician shared a glimpse of his “busy first day” as the mayor-elect, which he said was packed with interviews and meetings.
“A busy first day as your Mayor-elect: early morning interviews, transition announcements and meetings. More to say on all of it tomorrow. But a highlight was lunch with my Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at Laliguras Bistro in Jackson Heights,” he wrote in a post on X, sharing pictures of his lunch meeting.
In the picture, Ocasio-Cortez can be seen enjoying tea with momos, aloo-dam and what appears to be paneer tikka with bao — an ode to his South Asian heritage.
Laliguras Bistro is an Indian and Nepalese eatery in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York.
A busy first day as your Mayor-elect: early morning interviews, transition announcements and meetings. More to say on all of it tomorrow.
But a highlight was lunch with my Congresswoman @AOC at Laliguras Bistro in Jackson Heights. pic.twitter.com/vKWpNyrI09
— Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@ZohranKMamdani) November 6, 2025
Ocasio-Cortez was among the few Democrats who endorsed Mamdani for his mayoral bid.
Mamdani’s Historic Victory
Zohran Mamdani clinched New York City’s mayoral race, making history in many ways — as the first Muslim and first South Asian to lead America’s largest city, and, at 34, its youngest mayor in a century. He won the mandate with a left-wing agenda focused on making New York more affordable by campaigning against wealth inequality and promoting affordability.
But Mamdani’s victory is a watershed not just for his identity but for how he embraces it — fully.
In a victory speech capping his meteoric rise, New York’s mayor-elect quoted at length from the famous “Tryst with Destiny” address by India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.
As he left the stage to a cheering cross-section of the metropolis, the song on the speaker was not one of the many well-worn tunes about New York but the beats from a Bollywood blockbuster, “Dhoom.”
“I am young, despite my best efforts to grow older, I am Muslim, I am a democratic socialist and — most damning of all — I refuse to apologise for any of this,” Mamdani told supporters inside a Brooklyn music venue.
South Asians constitute one of the fastest-growing communities in the United States, totalling more than five million people, and have made major inroads into politics — notably former vice president Kamala Harris, whose mother was from India.
But candidates have handled their identity in sharply different ways. Two once-prominent Indian Americans, Nikki Haley and Bobby Jindal, both Republican governors of conservative Southern states, took pains to describe how they had become Christians.
But, for Mamdani, like many South Asians, identity is not always concise to explain. He was born in Uganda to two prominent Indian-born parents — the academic Mahmood Mamdani and filmmaker Mira Nair, who is Hindu.
Mamdani has spoken passionately about Islamophobia following the September 11, 2001 attacks, counts a kebab counter in diverse Jackson Heights as his favourite restaurant and, days before the election campaigned car to car at LaGuardia Airport among taxi drivers, who are often South Asian.