London's Blockbuster Indian Restaurants Are Coming Soon to America

New York Times

5 days ago

It has always felt like a given: Indian restaurants are better in the United Kingdom than here.
But Karam Sethi, the co-founder of JKS Restaurants, which runs several acclaimed Indian restaurants in London, doesn't believe that's true anymore.
On a recent trip to New York, he found the Indian food '100 percent' on par with London, he said. 'There has been a huge shift in quality in the last five years.'
Mr. Sethi is more than just enthusiastic about this shift. This year he's bringing two of his group's most popular restaurants to the States: Ambassadors Clubhouse, a full-throated paean to Punjabi food, will open in the Flatiron district of New York in October, and Gymkhana, inspired by India's elite social clubs, will open at the Aria Resort and Casino in Las Vegas in November, joining outposts of the famed restaurants Carbone and Din Tai Fung.
London may be a global capital for Indian restaurants, but those same establishments are now setting their eyes on the United States, motivated by their own large American customer bases (30 percent of Gymkhana and Ambassadors Clubhouse's customers are American, Mr. Sethi said) and the dynamism of the Indian dining scene here.
The America-bound list comprises a veritable who's who of Indian restaurants in London. Alongside Gymkhana and Ambassadors Clubhouse, Dishoom, a beloved chain inspired by the casual cafes started by Zoroastrian Irani immigrants in Mumbai, will open in Lower Manhattan as early as next year.
The chef Asma Khan, who runs the home-style Indian restaurant Darjeeling Express and was included on the Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world in 2024, is dreaming up a restaurant in New York that'll serve food from Kolkata, on the eastern tip of India, and open 'at least a year' from now, she said. Kricket, a more modern Indian small plates restaurant from the restaurateurs Will Bowlby and Rik Campbell, will debut in Manhattan, likely at the end of next year.
London has a long, complex history with South Asian restaurants, which have evolved from the inexpensive curry houses of the 1970s and '80s to the fine dining kitchens of the '90s and 2000s to today's establishments, many of which are sophisticated but not white-tablecloth.
A similar shift is occurring in the United States, Mr. Sethi said, with restaurants like Bungalow in New York and Copra in San Francisco that balance regional cooking with an ambitious cocktail menu and feel more personal than the butter-chicken fare of a decade ago. These restaurants are also winning prestigious awards and becoming difficult tables to get, showing just how much perceptions of Indian food have changed, he said.
'And it's not just cuisine. It is fashion, it is music,' he said, pointing to the success of musicians like Diljit Dosanjh, and Prada copying Indian shoe styles. 'Everything is thriving out there.'
But Indian food is not nearly as embedded into American culture as it is in Britain, a country that violently colonized India for years, and where chicken tikka masala is now considered the national dish. Mr. Sethi hopes to change that, 'to make it like one out of every seven days of week, you are going to be eating Indian food.'
Ambassadors Clubhouse will occupy two levels in a 22-story building on Broadway and 31st Street and is modeled after the glamorous mansions that dotted Punjab before the partition of India in 1947, with a large veranda, mirrored tables and patterned carpets. The menu of Punjabi fare includes shahi lobster curry and chile cheese pakode with tomato chutney.
Mr. Sethi compared Gymkhana, coming to Las Vegas, to the stylish and tough-to-book New York restaurant Polo Bar. The American version will have that old-world social club feel, with low lights and rattan and cane finishes — and instead of burgers and shrimp cocktail: tandoori lamb chops, wild venison biryani and pork cheek vindaloo.
Possibly even more famous than Gymkhana is Dishoom, where tourists from around the world flock for the luxuriously creamy black dal and crispy vada pav. Dishoom ran a two-week breakfast pop-up last summer at the French restaurant Pastis, and reservations filled up in less than five minutes, said Kavi Thakrar, one of the founders. In London, he said, about 20 percent of Dishoom's customers are American. The private equity firm L Catterton, backed by LVMH, also recently acquired a minority stake in Dishoom to support the American expansion, and the deal valued the group at 300 million pounds.
Mr. Thakrar has been looking at spaces in Manhattan since 2016, but feels that now is the right time to land in New York. The number of South Asian American residents has ballooned, he said, and the population and the food are more deeply integrated into the city's fabric.
'There are so many young professionals, second generation, third generation people running businesses,' he said.
Ms. Khan, of Darjeeling Express, hadn't even considered opening a restaurant in New York until a trip last March, when she hosted a sold-out pop-up at the regional Indian restaurant Dhamaka. Seeing the sheer range of Indian dining in the city, she decided to open a restaurant focused on Kolkata, where she is from, with dishes like chicken chaap and jhal farezi. She plans to start scoping out spaces in a few months.
'Ten years ago if I came in with Darjeeling Express' to New York, she said, 'I would have spent so long explaining to people what is prawn malai curry and kosha mangsho. Now a lot of the work has been done.'
Several Indian restaurants in London, including Dishoom and Gymkhana, have faced criticism for creating an atmosphere that some say feels nostalgic for the era of Britain's occupation of India. Those owners said their restaurants don't celebrate colonialism — Dishoom's King's Cross location, for example, tells the story of India's independence, Mr. Thakrar said, through portraits of Indian freedom fighters and slogans from the independence movement covering the walls. As for gymkhana clubs, which were mostly exclusionary spaces created by and for the British, Mr. Sethi noted that they were repurposed as social clubs for Indians — including his family members — after independence.
Jonathan Nunn, a British Indian writer who founded and coedits the British food magazine Vittles, wasn't sure how that aesthetic would translate, wondering if an American audience that's less familiar with British history may simply read it as luxe. 'I will tell you this,' he said. 'It hasn't stopped Indian Americans going there when they are in London. There are always Americans at JKS restaurants.'
Unlike Mr. Sethi, of JKS, he doesn't think the Indian food in both countries is on equal footing. 'The U.S. is about 10 to 15 years behind us,' he said.
But these London imports could help change that.
'What places like Dhamaka and Semma have shown is that those scene-y Indian restaurants work in New York,' Mr. Nunn said. 'I feel like the time is right.'
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