“Oh, Ambassador, you’re spoiling us!” a Londoner I do know likes to quip. Within the U.Ok., it’s a semi-famous line, a quote (a slight misquote, really) from a ’90s advert for Ferrero Rocher known as “The Ambassador’s Reception.” A glamorous, worldwide do is being held in a London mansion with Champagne and chitchat, a fantasy of flute-clinking polyglot concord. The catchphrase was coined to sing the praises of gold-foiled bonbons, however it works in so many off-piste circumstances.
Oh, Ambassador, you’re spoiling us! I assumed on a latest go to to Ambassadors Clubhouse, a stage-set and managed U.Ok. import that opened in February. Ambassadors Clubhouse, each its widespread Mayfair incarnation and this new outpost, takes its inspiration from an actual home and an actual ambassador, whose portrait hangs above the staircase in these fabricated digs. He’s the grandfather of its house owners, the Sethi siblings, and his summer season residence in Dalhousie, then a part of Punjab, was a gathering place for the jet set and his three grandchildren. With Ambassadors Clubhouse, the Sethis, whose London eating places embrace the upscale Gymkhana and the extra informal Sri Lankan chainlet Hoppers, sought to re-create not solely his “get together mansion,” as they name it, however the whole interval earlier than the British Empire divided the area into India and Pakistan on the finish of the Raj. “Many individuals eating at Ambassadors is not going to know that Punjab straddles a border,” the Anglo-Punjabi author Ciaran Thapar wrote final 12 months, nor learn about its partition and attendant pressured migration, “not to mention the distant British satan in its particulars.” The Sethis definitely should, however they aren’t inclined to spoil the get together. This Clubhouse is a historic fiction, not a historical past lesson. The Ambassador is joined on the wall by framed portraits of Punjabi rajas; one is depicted in diplomatic confab with Ryu from Avenue Fighter.
The Sethis have labored this type of high-gloss magic to good impact in London, the place their eating places, together with the unique Clubhouse, are starry and starred locations. So it’s destined to be in New York. A month or so after touching down, Ambassadors Clubhouse has been unbookable, no less than by means of official channels. These with the in hold the place busy; luck and persistence care for the remainder. On a latest Friday night time, folks have been getting turned away in teams, and the one stroke of luck fell to a younger girl who’d come to plead a case for her boyfriend’s birthday celebration. She prevailed with a reservation for the subsequent night time. I watched her throw her arms round two hosts — and have been these tears? Overhead, bhangra remixes of ’90s hip-hop performed.
The no-peeking restaurant entrance on Broadway; Instagram-friendly raj kachori chaat; kheer, a creamy dessert pudding with bananas, darkish chocolate, and peanuts; the lower-level eating room, the place the motion is. Photograph: Hugo Yu.
The no-peeking restaurant entrance on Broadway; Instagram-friendly raj kachori chaat; kheer, a creamy dessert pudding with bananas, darkish chocolate, an… extra
The no-peeking restaurant entrance on Broadway; Instagram-friendly raj kachori chaat; kheer, a creamy dessert pudding with bananas, darkish chocolate, and peanuts; the lower-level eating room, the place the motion is. Photograph: Hugo Yu.
The restaurant has two ranges with a big bar and small tables on the bottom ground and a small bar and enormous tables down beneath. The motion is downstairs, the place complete areas of the eating room might be sectioned off for personal events. The dividing curtains are tiger print, the partitions are black, and the bar is copper-colored because of an elaborate stained-glass show, or perhaps that was simply the sunshine refracting by means of a bottle of Johnnie Walker the scale of a wholesome child introduced out for a birthday celebration going down to our left one night time. “Very Indian,” a Bengali good friend at my desk stated.
The modular menu — break up into hors d’oeuvre papads (generally known as papadams) and chaat, appetizer-size “bitings,” full sections dedicated to tandoori dishes (cooked in a charcoal-fueled clay oven), grilled dishes, dishes cooked in cast-iron tawa skillets or clay matka pots or iron karahi woks, and biryanis, breads, dals, and condiments — results in limitless combos, although they add up. We made fast work of a basket of 5 kinds of papads, crisp, frilled, lentil-flour crackers served with a trio of chutneys and raita that have been much better and craggier than the paper-thin freebies of cheaper eating places round city; at $18 a basket, they’re a case of getting what you pay for.
A lot of Ambassadors Clubhouse feels engineered to impress no less than as a lot as delight. Gold leaf crowns lobster, and whereas the lamb Beliram — an “osso buco” variation on a Punjabi mutton dish — was very tasty, its innovation is in branding fairly than kind. The London restaurant’s well-known butter-chicken chops reimagine the customarily oversweet curry as a cashew paste spackled onto thigh-meat lollipops to gobble-able ends, and a brand new–for–New York creation, aloo mattar satpura, alchemizes the elements of vegetable samosas, the crisp wrapper and curried-potato inside, into seven-layer accordions, like deep-fried books, onto which diners ladle potato ki launji. Buffalo-milk paneer was bought out on each of my visits, so we settled for braised-goat sliders, whose sunny-side-up quail-egg toppings appear a bid for Instagram stardom. Should you’re available in the market for content material, skip them in favor of the raj kachori chaat, a globe of semolina ringed in yogurt whose inside hides a bounty of tandoori beets. The costs throughout the board ($60 wild prawns from the tandoor, $48 lamb biryani) are distinctly Brahmin.
It’s hardly Ambassadors’ fault that the menu feels just like the highest-end extension of some acquainted dishes. A lot of what People consider as Indian meals derives from Punjabi cooking owing to the inflow of immigrants from the area at the start of the twentieth century. That it’s performed effectively right here is to the restaurant’s credit score; that it’s performed expensively is the restaurant’s proper. However cooking from throughout the subcontinent is having fun with a growth on this metropolis, and Ambassadors Clubhouse arrives to face some compelling new rivals: Kashi in Downtown Brooklyn, Kidilum in Flatiron, and the Michelin-starred Houston import Musaafer in Tribeca, which caters to diners wanting particularly for ultrahigh-end, perennially booked Indian delicacies.
The Sethis should compete with their very own success as effectively. One South Asian couple whispered conspiratorially that they weren’t overly impressed with their meal. “London is significantly better,” the lady stated. “However attempt the dal.” To confidently discourse on worldwide lentils is its personal reward. However New York presents lots as effectively. Oh, Ambassador. Right here, we’re spoiled for alternative.
Scratchpad
Ambassadors Clubhouse
Good to Drink
To gasoline the get together vibes, the bar goes lengthy on difficult cocktails, like a “masala margarita,” however the wine checklist is wide-ranging and effectively priced.
Good to Nibble
The whispering girl was proper: The earthy black-lentil dal is kind of good. Among the many breads, carom-seeded naan was a favourite.
Good to Know
The Resy web page warns, “We’re limiting all company to at least one restaurant reservation monthly” to fight “excessive demand.”
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Should you favor to learn in print, you can even discover this text within the April 6, 2026, situation of
New York Journal.
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Should you favor to learn in print, you can even discover this text within the April 6, 2026, situation of
New York Journal.
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