The Great British-Indian Invasion
Both JKS and Dishoom announce imminent US expansion. Kricket and Darjeeling Express to follow.
Indian food in the US gets pretty consistent criticism from British diners but with London heavyweights landing in New York, that might finally start to change.
On Monday, Dishoom — the group which runs 12 popular Indian restaurants across the UK — announced that it has taken on outside investment for the first time (from LVMH-backed L Catterton, in a deal that valued the group at £300million) and would open in the US next year.
Then, yesterday, JKS Restaurants — the London-based hospitality group which operates 35 restaurants across the UK and the Middle East — announced that they would open an Ambassador’s Clubhouse outpost at the new A24 headquarters in Manhattan’s NoMad neighbourhood, and a Gymkhana at Las Vegas’ Aria Resort before the end of the year.
JKS is also bringing its Gymkhana Fine Foods line — a premium range of Indian cooking sauces and marinades — to the US, in a smart CPG play aimed directly at Whole Foods shelves and the shoppy-shops of North America. The brand, originally launched in 2013, recently completed a $3 million seed round with CAVU Consumer Partners — the VC firm behind Poppi, Oatly, Hims, Nécessaire, Topicals, Beyond Meat, and Vital Proteins. Basically, a greatest-hits list of wellness-forward, hyper-brandable products that live rent-free in both your fridge and your Instagram feed.
There’s rumoured to be a friendly rivalry between the two companies, with JKS allegedly ‘fuming’ that their stateside expansion news has been lumped in with Dishoom’s (tbh who wouldn’t) but both companies serve different types of customers and given that the US restaurant industry is a massive sector, with sales reaching $1.09 trillion in 2023, there’s definitely room for both at the table.
Several other London-based Indian restaurants are also preparing to enter the US market. Asma Khan, the chef behind the acclaimed Darjeeling Express and a featured subject in an episode of Chef’s Table, told The New York Times that she plans to open a location in NYC “at least a year” from now. And Indian small plates Kricket is also on track to open in Manhattan next year.
Dishoom was founded in 2010 by cousins Shamil and Kavi Thakrar, alongside Adarsh and Amar Radia (the latter two have since exited), with the aim of reimagining Bombay’s iconic Irani cafés for a Western audience — but without flattening the experience into cliché or kitsch. Their first location opened in Covent Garden and fifteen years later, Dishoom is basically a national institution in the UK: 12 full-scale restaurants across major cities, four “Permit Room” spin-offs (smaller bars with drinks-first menus), a bestselling cookbook, a robust delivery arm, and apparently a hotel in the works.
According to the group’s most recent Companies House filings, Dishoom’s 2023 revenue was £117M and profit before tax was £7.4M. Also: they’ve ranked as the #1 Hospitality Company to Work For in the UK on Glassdoor for two years running. And #4 overall on The Times’ Best Places to Work list back in 2021. A nice flex when your brand is built on hospitality actually meaning something.
Dishoom isn’t somewhere that I go regularly - not out of protest, just due to logistics. Still, the queues outside each location continue to snake around the block, and when friends visit from abroad, even the ones who ask for “non-touristy” recommendations, a visit to one of Dishoom’s outposts appears invariably on their itinerary.
It’s the kind of restaurant brand that’s become a cultural reference point, not only for Indian food in the UK, but as a case study in how to build a hospitality brand that balances nostalgia with ambitious growth. And now, as it prepares to enter the US market, American diners gets to line up too.
JKS was founded in 2008 by siblings Jyotin, Karam, and Sunaina Sethi, and their 35-strong portfolio across the UK and Middle East definitely leans luxe — seven of their restaurants have Michelin stars, and most of the others wouldn’t mind if you assumed they did. The group reported a £73.4 million turnover for 2024, which obviously ain’t nothing, but the more interesting move, IMHO, is the potential for a full-blown CPG rollout in the U.S. — a $900 billion market that’s deeply into “chef-backed” anything in a jar. Given their existing relationship with CAVU, I’ll be watching this one closely.
Their members-club-meets-luxury-dining concept, Ambassador’s Clubhouse — inspired by the old party mansions of Punjab — is set to open across two floors of A24’s new headquarters at Broadway and 31st. Considering New York is in the middle of a private members club boom (see: $5,000 annual fees and oat milk martinis), and GQ declared just yesterday that Manhattan is officially back at the center of the restaurant universe, the timing, and location, feels pretty much spot on.
Gymkhana, one of only four Indian restaurants in the world with two Michelin stars, is heading to the Las Vegas Strip, landing at the Aria Resort and Casino, where it’ll join neighbours like Carbone, Catch, and Din Tai Fung. Also, an extremely smart move as (incase you’ve been living under a rock) over the past decade or so, Vegas has spent the past decade transforming itself into a high-end dining destination that’s now more black truffle than buffet.
In an interview with the New York Times that was published yesterday, Karam Sethi of stated that 30 percent of Gymkhana and Ambassadors Clubhouse’s customers in London are American. The good are there for the taking, it seems.
Now, who’s backing my crowdfund to expand Tayaabs across the pond?
