Gymkhana

Gymkhana opened in September 2013, sister restaurant to Trishna in Marylebone.  The name is taken from private clubs in India in the days of the Raj rather than the equestrian events. This gentleman’s club theme is picked up in the slightly clubby décor of the 50-seat dining room. It is smart, with oak booths, leather banquettes, rattan chairs and marble tables. It is not only the wood that is dark; the lighting in the evening is distinctly low, with a small font menu meaning that a torch would come in handy for those without the vision of a bird of prey. The menu here has less emphasis on seafood than Trishna, and draws on regional dishes from all over the country. As we shall, see, there are plenty of unusual options available.

The menu is set out with small snacks, large snacks, kebabs, curries and side dishes, with a tasting menu at £55. At my first visit the waiter was quite insistent about us ordering dishes from each section of the menu, but since even the small snacks were of starter dimensions, and the biriani was huge, this just meant that we ended up with far more food than we could eat. Good for the profit margins of the restaurant, but frustrating as a diner. Some dishes seem boldly priced e.g. “kid goat raan, masala tandoori potato, cucumber & cumin raita” is on the menu at a little matter of £55. The goat is milk-fed from the Pyrenees and the restaurant reckon it costs them £15 or more per leg, but this is certainly a costly dish.

Potato chaat (£7) was nicely presented, its chickpeas tender, the tamarind bringing sweetness, but the chaat lacked spice (12/20). I preferred duck dosa (£8.50), a conical dosa containing spicy minced duck. The meat was very good though the dosa was rather flabby in texture (13/20). Garlic prawns were tender and of good quality, the garlic marinade with them working well (14/20). 

Bream (£12) in a spicy marinade was carefully cooked, the spice topping nicely balanced (14/20). Muntjac biriani (£25) was served in a pot with a pastry crust, which is how biriani is made in Hyderabad, arguably the home of the (originally Persian) dish in India, such as the superb version at the wonderful Falaknuma Palace. The rice was quite fragrant, the pieces of venison avoiding the drying out I was nervous about (14/20). Mustard potato (£6.50) had retained the texture of the vegetable properly, but was lacking in enough mustard flavour (12/20). Dhal (at a chunky £7), made from three different dhals plus kidney beans, was unfortunately distinctly watery; the best versions, such as at Bhukara in Delhi and ably reproduced at Swagat in London, are a world apart from this (11/20).  A basket of bread including naan and roti (£5) was rather too hard; perhaps it had been left around too long before being served (12/20).

To finish, halwa tart featured good pastry and carrot that was not too sweet (13/20). Service was attentive but verging on pushy at times, too anxious to upsell. A mineral water bottle was removed before it was empty with a quick “one more bottle?” – I’d prefer to drink what I paid for first. The bill, with just beer to drink (£5.50 a bottle) came to £72 a head, which is a lot of money for what was a merely very pleasant Indian meal. We ordered two dishes less than our waiter recommended, shared a dessert and skipped coffee, but if you followed the advice given by our waiter on ordering and strayed into some of the costlier dishes, let alone ordered wine, the bill could quickly become stratospheric. I slightly prefer Trishna of the two venues: it is less luxurious, but the service there feels much less avaricious than Gymkhana, where I had a sense that every possible ploy was being used to extract the maximum money from the diner. The menu at Gymkhana is interesting, the food is good and in this prime Mayfair location it will doubtless prosper, but I question the value for money factor at this dinner. 

At a follow up lunch a duck egg bhurji came with lobster and a paratha. The word “bhurji” means “scrambled”, and this is essentially scrambled egg with onions and spices, and in this case a few small pieces of lobster. For me it was a little light on spicing, but was pleasant enough (12/20). I liked the paratha with it, which avoided greasiness (easily 13/20).

Kid goat methi keema was minced goat meat with fenugreek, with “pao” (white bread roll) on the side. The idea is for you to spoon some mince into the bread, perhaps adding a little chilli, to make a variant on the pao (also spelt pav) bhajia that is a popular Mumbai street food snack. This was a reasonable idea, though with the rather tentative spicing it was hard to get excited about what is essentially a mince sandwich (12/20). In Mumbai you would typically get a spicy sauce with a dish like this, and I think that this would have enhanced the dish. 

I tried the duck dosa once again, with the same result: nice minced duck with a reasonable spice kick, a conical dosa that didn’t have quite the texture that I have experienced with dosas in India (13/20). Again sea bream was excellent, the fish cooked carefully, the bright green coloured marinade topping having a healthy chilli bite (14/20). As before, the bread was reasonable but not great, the roti texture harder than I would have liked (12/20). Black dhal had the same consistency issue as the version I tried at dinner (11/20). The bill for lunch came to a far more reasonable £38 a head, with the two-course lunch element of this at £20 per person, mineral water at £4 a bottle.

Service was better than at my first dinner, though a waiter tried to remove my not-quite-finished wine glass. Given the similar incident with the mineral water bottle at dinner, this suggests over-alacrity in the way the waiting staff have been trained to remove glasses. Surely, if there is even a little wine left in a glass, a waiter should check whether the diner has finished?

At a further dinner, chicken tikka (£10) and tandoori prawns with red pepper chutney (£13) were very good, tender and with quite vibrant spicing (14/20). I was unconvinced by the kid goat raan (£55), curried goat leg served on the bone (12/20) but enjoyed achari roe deer (£40), three different cuts of the deer served with keema naan (14/20).

So, over three meals, my impression is of a restaurant that has a very successful formula: attractive dining room, interesting and unusual menu choices, competent cooking. The restaurant conducted a very successful PR campaign at launch and was full even at lunch on my second visit. The pricing seems high to me, at least at dinner, and I found the service to be flawed on two occasions. Still, the place is clearly doing very well indeed.

Further reviews: 24th Feb 2020 | 25th Sep 2015