At its heart, it’s home food’: Karam Sethi on bringing Gymkhana to Dubai

 In Dubai, new restaurant openings arrive with the same regularity as rush hour on Sheikh Zayed Road: constant, a little overwhelming, and largely forgotten by the time the next one pulls up behind it. The city's dining scene moves quickly, and most openings dominate the conversation for a fortnight before receding, reservations impossible to find one week and easy the next.

A month after opening in Gate Village, Gymkhana has not receded. If anything, the interest has deepened. The wait for a table is still real, and the tandoori lamb chops (genuinely, mouthwateringly good) are the gift that keeps on giving: one bite in, and you already know you're in trouble, already thinking about the return visit before the first is even finished.Many arrive with a prior idea of Gymkhana already in their heads, having eaten at the original in London, visited one of its other international locations, or simply known the restaurant by reputation. For them, this is not an introduction so much as the latest version of something they already know.

That distinction matters to Karam Sethi. Gymkhana is no longer a newcomer introducing itself to an unfamiliar market. Since opening in Mayfair in 2013, Sethi has built it into a global culinary presence, two Michelin stars, and further restaurants in Doha, Riyadh and Las Vegas. Dubai is its fifth iteration, and perhaps the clearest test yet of how far the concept can stretch without diluting what made it distinctive in the first place.

"More than anything, they've reminded us that great hospitality is universal," Sethi says, of what the different cities have taught him. "The details may differ, but people everywhere respond to authenticity, generosity and quality and a sense of conviviality. What's been fascinating is seeing how quickly diners engage with regional Indian food when it's presented with clarity and confidence." The question underneath that, really, is what should remain the same when a restaurant moves from one city to another, and what is free to change.

Sethi's answer has been remarkably consistent. The rooms can change. The drinks can change. The menu can absorb ingredients and ideas from a new city. What cannot change, he argues, is the character of the food itself: its boldness, its regional references, its generosity, and the sense that it should remain recognisably Indian whether the setting is a Mayfair townhouse, a Las Vegas dining room, or now a restaurant in DIFC.

Descend the mirrored staircase into the Gate Village space and that same principle governs the room. The familiar Mayfair hallmarks are all there: brass, marble, stained glass, reeded timber, Murano lighting. But the proportions and palette have been adjusted for the Gulf, the space lighter and warmer, anchored by a sweeping peacock mural and a jewellery-box ceiling downstairs, while somewhere nearby a biryani is cracked open at the table, its sealed lid releasing a slow curl of spiced steam into the room before the food itself arrives. The smell alone is enough to make ordering feel urgent: the particular torment of catching a trace of something extraordinary and not yet being allowed to eat it.

"Dubai is one of the few cities in the world where diners already have a deep understanding of Indian food while remaining very open to new experiences," Sethi tells The Kurator. "That's a rare combination."

It is also a useful description of the challenge he set himself. "The core philosophy around our flavour, technique and hospitality will never change," he says. "What Dubai has offered us is the opportunity to push the menu further than we've done in any previous Gymkhana location. Dubai has one of the most knowledgeable dining scenes in the world, particularly when it comes to Indian food, and diners are incredibly curious to discover something new." The restaurant spans 137 seats, with a menu that pushes further into the regional breadth of Indian cooking than any previous Gymkhana, and by Sethi's own account, it is his most ambitious project yet.

To understand why he approached it this way, it helps to go back twelve years, to Mumbai, where a 23-year-old Sethi sat across from a man he barely knew, trying to persuade him to license a restaurant concept. He had no Michelin stars, no international portfolio and no established name behind him. What he had was a conviction that London was missing a more regional, more refined approach to Indian food.

"Honestly it was probably a combination of ambition, passion and slight naivety," Sethi says of the trip that became Trishna, the restaurant that preceded Gymkhana and taught the Sethi siblings how to run one. "I was convinced there was room in London for a more regional and pure approach to Indian food. Looking back, the confidence came from conviction and the belief that we were addressing a gap that I knew London was missing, if we focussed on quality and authenticity."

Twelve years later, in a city where dining trends come and go like there's no tomorrow, that early conviction has turned into something far more special: a restaurant people keep coming back to. It's a feeling only fully understood by those who have experienced Gymkhana themselves: every part of the meal hits the mark, the food is undeniably exceptional, and the warmth from the staff, their evident love for the restaurant, is deeply contagious.

Ask Sethi which single dish he would put in front of someone who has never eaten at Gymkhana, and the answer comes without hesitation: the tandoori lamb chops. “They're one of the dishes most closely associated with Gymkhana and capture so much of what we're about,” he says. “They nod to the bold flavours that Gymkhana is known for, while showcasing the precision and attention to detail that go into every dish.” They arrive charred almost to black, the meat beneath pink and giving way at the first pull, smoke and ghee and a heat that gathers slowly in the back of the throat rather than up front.

Be warned: the menu makes even the most decisive diner hesitate, so arrive hungry and leave room for an array of dishes. The Goan Prawn Curry brings the richness and depth of a dish made for sharing, while the Aloo Chaat, with tamarind and sev, cuts through the meal with its characteristic sharpness. Beyond those familiar Gymkhana signatures, the Dubai menu ranges through Amritsari Shrimp & Queenies, to Chicken Butter Masala giving the meal a breadth that makes choosing just one or two dishes feel almost beside the point and rather impossible.

The lamb chops, then, are less a relic of the original Gymkhana than a reference point. They are there to establish what has travelled intact; around them, Sethi has allowed Dubai considerably more room to speak. He describes the menu as roughly 80 per cent Gymkhana and 20 per cent specific to its surroundings, but the distinction is less mechanical than it sounds. The familiar dishes give the restaurant its continuity. The new ones show what Sethi thinks Gymkhana can become when he has a different city, a different audience and a different set of ingredients to work with.

That balance is apparent even in the dishes that have become signatures elsewhere. The tandoori masala lamb chops and chicken butter masala that anchor the Dubai menu are the same Gymkhana dishes served in Las Vegas and Mayfair. Around them, however, is a menu Sethi says pushes further than any previous opening. It is difficult to call the Dubai restaurant an outpost when so much of what is on the table could only have been made here.

Ask Sethi what makes Gymkhana Gymkhana, and he skips the words most restaurateurs reach for: precision, innovation, disruption. He instead reaches for a Hindi phrase, ghar ka khana, home food, that has nothing to do with fine dining at all.

"At its heart, it's familiar flavours and comforting ghar ka khana, but executed with an obsessive attention to detail," he says. "The flavours are bold, rooted in tradition, richly layered with spice and ultimately very comforting. It isn't about formal fine dining. It's a culinary experience executed with finesse and precision, but with conviviality, warmth and accessibility at its core."

It is a radical thing to say about a two-Michelin-star kitchen. Most restaurants at this level are built to feel rarefied. Sethi has spent his career building one designed to feel like somebody's kitchen, just with better technique than anyone's mother actually had.

If Gymkhana is Sethi's public argument for what Indian food can be, Ambassadors Clubhouse, the sibling concept that opened in New York earlier this year, is his private one. It traces back to his maternal grandfather, a diplomat whose postings carried the family across four continents, and to childhood summers at his house in Dalhousie, in the old Punjab hill country.

"The way he hosted people," Sethi says, when asked what stayed with him. "There was always a sense of generosity and openness. Guests would arrive, conversations would stretch late into the evening and food was always central to bringing everyone together. That's something we've tried to capture in the Ambassadors Clubhouse."

Two decades and five cities later, what Sethi keeps building, in one form or another, is still that table.

For a restaurant this decorated, Sethi is strikingly unsentimental about the moment it became official. He suspected, before the ceremony, that Gymkhana was about to win its second Michelin star, becoming one of a handful of Indian restaurants in the world to hold two. He told no one. He didn't let himself fully believe it either 

"The official reveal was at the awards ceremony in Manchester," he says. "I was with our General Manager Rohith Shetty and our Executive Chef at the time. The team and my family were all watching back in London, so I didn't need to call anyone." He got on the first train back to London that evening, to celebrate with the team.

There is something in that detail, the instinct to get on a train rather than pick up a phone, that explains more about Sethi than any of the figures around him: the Michelin stars, the five cities, the retail line now sitting on shelves at Waitrose because guests kept asking how to recreate the flavours at home. "The biggest lesson has been that accessibility and authenticity don't have to be opposing ideas," he says of that decision, and it could just as easily describe the entire career.

"Ultimately, I hope Gymkhana becomes known for championing Indian cuisine at the highest level while remaining true to serving pure Indian food and classic Indian hospitality," he says, when asked what he wants people to eventually say about it. "It's always been about creating an accessible and timeless restaurant built around conviviality, generosity and iconic flavours rooted in tradition. It's Indian soul food."