From Eater.com: Reservations are now live for the buzzy Ambassadors Clubhouse, the London import opening Wednesday, February 11, at developer GDSNY’s 1245 Broadway in Nomad, between West 30th and 31st streets. The opulent 150-seat restaurant showcasing Punjabi cuisine comes from JKS Restaurants, which opened the London original in 2024. It’s on the ground floor of film studio A24’s New York headquarters — behind indie hits like Marty Supreme and Moonlight.
This NYC debut follows last year’s JKS expansion of Gymkhana in Las Vegas. Before that, the company opened its Persian-leaning Berenjak in Los Angeles and at New York’s members-only Dumbo House in 2024. The restaurant group now operates 35 restaurants internationally.
Siblings Jyotin, Karam, and Sunaina Sethi launched the restaurant group in 2008; Ambassadors Clubhouse is named for their grandfather, a former Indian ambassador. The interiors are inspired by his summer house and the abandoned party mansions of India. In addition to Ambassadors Clubhouse, the group’s other Indian restaurants include coastal Indian Michelin-starred Trishna and two-Michelin-starred Gymkhana, among others.
The new restaurant, which is nearly 8,000 square feet across two floors and designed by North End, is recognizable to New Yorkers familiar with the London location: JKS has mirrored the look, recreating layered, maximalist interiors — dark woods, jewel tones, metallic accents, and sceney rooms, along with intimate pockets throughout the two-story restaurant.
Upstairs, the focal point among tables and banquettes is an ornate rectangular bar in the center of the room, designed for reservations-only, full-scale dining. At JKS’s London restaurants, bar seats are considered prime real estate, each with a well-positioned view of the dining room.
Past the entrance and the host stand, down the stairs over which a portrait of the ambassador hangs, a second bar anchors the lower level, this one geared toward drinking and hanging out, alongside private and semi-private dining rooms. It’s the “clubhouse” side of the name.
The New Yorker who recently became the global CEO of JKS’s Indian restaurants, Pavan Pardasani, says they deliberately created it to feel like a house. He describes the dining room as “our living room,” and the restaurant as an extension of the way Indian families traditionally host.
“In our culture, hospitality is bringing people into your home,” he says. “It’s cooking with intention, thinking about what your guest likes to drink, whether they’re cold, whether they’re comfortable. That thoughtfulness is as important as the food.”
The former head of marketing and brand management for Tao Group grew up not far from the restaurant’s address. He’s joined by fellow New Yorker Rob Rawleigh, who is a managing partner of U.S. restaurants for the group, and was also in management at Tao.
Pardasani sees the city as both an opportunity and a proving ground for JKS. He describes the opening as “highly complementary” to the current moment in the city’s Indian dining scene, rather than competitive with the likes of Unapologetic Foods restaurants such as Semma as well as newer entrants, Bungalow, by Vikas Khanna, and Houston import, Musaafer. New York, he says, is “the most developed dining market in America,” with diners who arrive informed, opinionated, and increasingly curious about regional cooking.
At the same time, he is realistic about the lingering baggage Indian restaurants still face.
“You still deal with this glass ceiling with our food — people who say they don’t like Indian food,” Pardasani said. “In my opinion, that has more to do with the fact that they haven’t experienced enough of it.”
Under executive chef Karan Mittal — formerly at Indian Accent in Delhi and New York, as well as Baar Baar in L.A. — Ambassadors Clubhouse focuses on dishes that show the range of Punjabi fare, rooted in familiar techniques and spice layering. The menu is approximately divided by papads and chaats, chutneys, kebabs, biryani, matka, and karahi dishes that are mostly meats, vegetables, and breads.
Take the aloo mattar satpura, a dramatic, seven-layer, samosa-style pastry folded into crisp, pleated sheets and filled with spiced potatoes and peas. Inspired by street snacks in Amritsar, it’s both technical in this presentation and familiar in its flavors. Another standout is the warqi lamb seekh kebab, made from pounded lamb shoulder wrapped in naan and grilled. The kebabs are sliced into tight spirals and served with tamarind and red chile chutney.
Pardasani is careful to frame the restaurant not just as an Indian destination. “If you only think about what we do in the context of being a great Indian restaurant, you’re missing the message,” he says. “We’re just trying to be a great restaurant, period — the kind where people love the room, the service, the feeling of being there. The menu is part of that, not the whole story.”