Illustration by Fig & Ginger, drawn from the review. The venue's own photo is on its way.
North Indian fine dining in Mayfair, London
Gymkhana
The Lamb Chops Are Not a Rumor
Gymkhana does not look like a place that wants to change your life. It sits on Albemarle Street in Mayfair and looks like it has always been there. Then the food arrives and the colonial theater drops away. This is North Indian cooking with real appetite, and it has been like that since 2013.
The Sethi family built it. Jyotin, Karam and Sunaina started JKS Restaurants with Trishna in 2008, then opened this five years later. Giles Coren called it the best restaurant he had ever been to and gave it his first ten out of ten, which tells you how a professional eater with a lot of opinions reacted. It was the National Restaurant of the Year in 2014 and it earned two Michelin stars in 2024, the first Indian restaurant in London to reach that level. A fire shut it from June 2019 to February 2020, and it came back like nothing happened.
Order the Tandoori Masala Lamb Chops, which people talk about the way other people talk about a childhood home. Then the Kid Goat Methi Keema, spiced and messy and worth every napkin, and the Wild Muntjac Biryani if your table can stand more meat. Book early, go for a weeknight, and bring people who share. Make the trip, and know that I do not say that casually about a restaurant.
- Order this
- Tandoori Masala Lamb Chops, Kid Goat Methi Keema, Wild Muntjac Biryani
- The damage
- $$$
- Go
- A weeknight, early, before the room fills up
- Find it
- 42 Albemarle Street, London W1S 4JH
- Website
- gymkhanalondon.com