Somewhere on the road of 2026, The Strip, as we know it – with its plug-socket frenzy, Hunter S. Thompson vibes and temples to materialism – has become a runway to bougie Indian food, of all things, as I discovered when landing recently in Las Vegas. Sin City?! More like Tandoori Town! A feeling quite literally hard to evade – what with the monster-size flickering billboard atop the Aria Hotel, beckoning visitors to Gymkhana, the two-Michelin star restaurant from London that has, at long last, made its American debut.
As the town’s most-anticipated opening this year, and one of the biggest in America at large – distinguished by the fact that it’s the first Indian restaurant in a Vegas casino – it inspired an unsurprisingly buzzy launch party, attracting guests such as One Battle After Another starlet Teyana Taylor, as well as headline-causing nepo-baby Brooklyn Beckham. The heat in the room, let’s just say, was not just from the Masala Lamb Chops.
“MGM Resorts and Aria were the first to recognize that the time is ripe for Indian cuisine.” So explains Karam Sethi, co-founder of JKS Restaurants, the group behind Gymkhana (which remains a family affair – an enterprise consisting of Karam, his older brother, Joytin, and sister Sunaina). As the group’s food and creative director, Karam also told me later that the project had been in gestation for almost a decade, and that from their perspective, “Las Vegas is such an incredible window into the cross-section of America – it’s a unique way to reach the diverse spectrum of U.S. guests, as well as international guests, in a setting where the best of hospitality is deeply appreciated.”
Indubitably, you can’t get any more American than The Strip in Vegas – and few places are as much a marker of the mainstream tastes. With Indian fine dining making more and more inroads on this side of the pond – having been a part of the colonial culinary DNA in the UK for eons – Gymkhana in Vegas portends a Gladwellian tipping point.
Taking a cue, indeed, from Britain – where Indian fine dining is a 400 million GBP business, according to business analyst Ash Talwar – its rise here is the definition of what’s been an “untapped market” in my view. With more visibility, increased regional representation and restaurateurs willing to take chances, it’s also been a case of rebranding by positioning Indian restaurants in aesthetically pleasing spaces with the prices to match (following the path of many other cuisines in the past – like, for instance, when Italian restaurants had a glow-up in the 1980s).
Exhibit A: Vegas, where Gymkhana’s opening is comparable even to when Joël Robuchon – one of the godfathers of haute French cuisine – opened his legendary restaurant, Robuchon, back in 1998 at the MGM Grand, permanently changing the city’s culinary landscape. An opening that trumpeted a moment when Vegas’ culinary scene was moving away from its rep as a steakhouse-and-buffet kinda town into something more of a gastronomic mecca.
Anyone who’s followed the ebbs and flows of chefs knows what happened next: greats like Alain Ducasse, Thomas Keller and Guy Savoy all followed. As did the “foodies.” When the Bellagio debuted, so too came Jean-Georges Vongerichten and legendary New York restaurant Le Cirque, created by Sirio Maccioni. And by the time The Cosmopolitan opened in 2010, it heralded yet another shift – not just to high-end restaurants, but to the “cool,” world-spanning dining of the era, typified by chefs like David Chang of Momofuku fame. If you were going to have any platform as a chef, you absolutely needed to have a presence in Vegas – that is what others like four-Michelin star chef José Andres quickly discerned.
Today, despite some of the uncertainty of late in the desert playground (tourism in Vegas dropped nearly 8 percent in 2025 due to political tremors), the food scene continues to evolve. “We replicated exactly what we have in London in terms of product – food, drink, service and design – in Vegas,” shares Karam Sethi. “Given that 30 percent of our clientele is American at Gymkhana in London, that gives us huge confidence,” he continued.
The restaurant, after all, was a game-changer when it opened in Mayfair back in 2013 – a departure from the “curry and a pint” ethos of Indian food in Britain. Similar even to the opening of Mr. Chow in London’s Knightsbridge neighbourhood decades prior, when Michael Chow began a world-spanning brand that glamorized Chinese food and took it from the spectre of cheap paper cartons.
The parade of celebrities at Gymkhana London – drawing stars such as Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus and Stanley Tucci – also gave this restaurant a patina of cool. The vibe, as I discovered during my visit, is congruous with the OG restaurant: giant double doors in the Aria Hotel’s marble lobby lead to a warren of dark, moody rooms inspired by the gymkhanas from the British reign on the subcontinent, sporting clubs where the who’s-who would assemble to socialize. Ceiling fans, lush fabrics, jade-green hues and dark wood gussy up the spot, with walls bearing artwork inspired by paintings hung in the homes of Sethi forbearers. There is, moreover, a hushed quality to the space, set against the ambient soundtrack of Bollywood tunes – a world away from the mania of Vegas.
The food? It replicates the menu in London, but with exceptions, honed by executive chef Srikant Kumar. “We did add some new dishes to answer the call of the American palate,” Sethi confirms. Exhibit A: beef on the menu, which is new. What happens in Vegas, yada yada. These dishes include Wagyu Keema Naan, a signature naan filled with spiced wagyu mince, served with cucumber and cumin raita, as well as the Beef Short Rib Pepper Fry, a dish tingling with South Indian spices and coconut. (Had the latter! Yum!)
“10 out of 10!” some beauties at another table exclaimed about the venison biryani. They were a mixed bunch – some from Mumbai, others from LA – and all long-time fans of Gymkhana. When my own biryani arrived, it did so with panache: surgically cut, table-side, by a server, from inside a steaming puff-pastry. Layers of flavour, topped with a small fortune in saffron.
In a town that’s always prided itself on giving the people what they want – from the “Viva Las Vegas” era of Elvis to Adele at The Sphere – the purr in the restaurant made it clear: Vegas had entered its Indian era. And even with the arrival this year of several other new hot spots in town – the super-chic Carbone Riviera (the latest from the New York-based Carbone group) at the Bellagio and the much-anticipated stateside opening of iconic Mexico City eatery Contramar inside the 67-story ultra-luxe Fontainebleau hotel – it’s Gymkhana that’s said to be the hardest rez to nab at the moment.
From my perspective? The lure is as much about the food (which lends itself to sharing and is puckeringly good) but the total experience. The lighting. The service. The feeling of being transported.
“The response has been overwhelmingly positive,” says Sethi, adding that it was important to stand side-by-side to their London outpost. “We worked really hard to deliver the same level of quality in taste, smell, touch and sound, along with replicating the interior and space – just all on a larger scale that is Las Vegas.”
It’s a Trend
A new wave of buzzy Indian restaurants – with a London twist. Here are four spots to keep in mind in other cities:
PUNCH, Toronto
God Save the Naan: this ritzy spot, with fabulous Italian lucite chandeliers, intimate round tables and mouthwatering Indo-British dishes like butter chicken pot pie opened last year inside Hotel Le Germain.
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JAMAVAR, Dubai
Grand chandeliers and a plush interior set the scene at this restaurant direct from Mayfair.
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AMBASSADOR’S CLUBHOUSE, New York
Maximalist in every way, this new spot, inspired by a diplomat’s lair, also comes from the JKS group.
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JOHL, Bangok
Coastal Indian flavours that dazzle make this a must-stop in the Thai capital.
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