Gymkhana Dubai opens its doors inside the DIFC

Gymkhana Dubai opened on 1 September at Gate Village, Building 7, in the Dubai International Financial Centre, the two-Michelin-starred London restaurant's first permanent home in the Gulf.

The Mayfair original earned its first star within nine months of opening in 2013 and a second in 2024. DIFC put the new room three minutes' walk from Financial Centre Metro station, in a district that has spent two years courting restaurant groups from London and New York.

JKS Restaurants, the company behind Gymkhana, is run by siblings Jyotin, Karam and Sunaina Sethi. Karam Sethi worked on the Dubai interior with designer Samuel Hosker of North End Design: Indian marble, stained glass and a mirrored staircase down to a lower room finished with a peacock-feather mural.

A two-Michelin-star kitchen now shares a DIFC block with two rivals that got to Dubai first.

Gymkhana Dubai by the numbers

The dining room seats 137 across two levels, with a terrace and a private room for up to 14 seated guests or 30 standing. Dinner runs nightly from 6.30pm to 1am; lunch service is due to start in October.

À la carte dishes run from AED 25 to AED 365, with tandoori masala lamb chops at the top of that range and aloo chaat at AED 85. A tasting menu costs AED 695 a head, AED 595 for the vegetarian version, with wine pairing at AED 650.

Executive chef Rahul Rana and JKS global culinary director Chet Sharma built a run of Dubai-only dishes alongside the Mayfair regulars: wagyu beef sukka with bone marrow, goat shank nihari and a Chettinad duck dosa sit next to the chicken butter masala that made the London menu's name.

"Dubai has established itself as one of the world's leading culinary destinations, making it a natural home for Gymkhana's next chapter," said Pavan Pardasani, JKS Restaurants' global chief executive, when the opening was confirmed in July.

A crowded Gulf dining scene

Gymkhana already trades in Riyadh and Las Vegas, part of a wider push by fine-dining groups into Gulf cities that rarely featured on lists such as the World's 50 Best Restaurants a decade ago. This Dubai debut lands in a DIFC strip that already seats Trishna and Bombay Bustle, two Indian restaurants with their own London pedigree, and takes the same bet that carried Juno at Olympia's 265-cover opening this autumn: that a big name travels better than a new one.

October's lunch launch will be the next test of how the room fills outside the dinner rush that has carried Gymkhana Dubai through its first ten days.