An honest conversation the industry needs to have.
By Kazi Zaman
Let's start with the numbers, because they don't lie. An evening tasting menu at BiBi will cost you well over £100 a head before you've touched a drink. At Gymkhana, the tasting menu sits at a similar altitude. Kanishka's seven courses come in at £120, with wine pairing adding another £80 on top. Benares — one of the longest-standing names in London's Indian fine dining scene — charges £139 for its tasting menu, with an optional wine pairing that costs almost as much again. Add a cocktail at the start, a digestif at the end, a shared side or two, service charge — and you're looking at an evening that can clear £200 per person without anyone at the table doing anything particularly extravagant.
The question isn't whether these restaurants are good. Most of them are. The question is who, exactly, they are now for.
There is a particular irony buried in this conversation. Indian food in Britain built its entire popular reputation on accessibility. The neighbourhood curry house — open late, generous with portions, gentle on the wallet — was where generations of British people fell in love with the cuisine. It was food that belonged to everyone. The move toward fine dining was always going to change that, and nobody is arguing that ambition should be rationed. But there is something worth examining when the cuisine that arguably democratised eating out in this country now occupies some of the most expensive tables in one of the world's most expensive cities.
The cost pressures are real and they deserve acknowledgement. London's hospitality industry is operating under a set of conditions that would test any business — chronic staff shortages, energy costs that have shifted dramatically over the past few years, ingredient prices that continue to climb, and the brutal economics of Mayfair and Soho rents that make any calculation of value almost impossible to win. A tasting menu at £140-plus in central London in 2026 is not the same proposition as the same number five years ago. Chefs and restaurateurs are not printing money. They are, in many cases, barely surviving.
And yet.
The desi community — the very community whose cuisine underpins this entire category — is increasingly priced out of experiencing it at this level. A British South Asian family that grew up eating extraordinary food at home, that has a genuine connection to these flavours and traditions, finds itself looking at a table at Gymkhana as a once-a-year event at best. The food of their grandmothers has become a luxury good. That is, at minimum, worth sitting with.
There is also a wider question about what these prices communicate to the broader dining public. London already has a well-documented problem with fine dining feeling like a performance for the wealthy. When Indian fine dining joins that bracket without the Michelin star pedigree that typically justifies these numbers in French or Japanese cuisine — with a handful of honourable exceptions — it creates a perception problem. It invites the question of whether the pricing is proportionate to the experience, or whether Mayfair postcodes and beautiful interiors are doing some of the heavy lifting.
The most compelling counter-argument is that the elevation of Indian food to this level is, in itself, a kind of justice. For decades, the cuisine was undervalued — both commercially and critically. The assumption that Indian food should be cheap was never really about economics; it was about bias. Every restaurant that charges Gymkhana prices is, in some sense, making a statement about what this food is worth. That argument has genuine force.
But worth and accessibility are not the same thing. A cuisine can be worthy of the highest prices and still be made more available — through lunch menus, bar seats, more accessible second concepts — without any sacrifice of ambition. The restaurants that understand this already offer it. BiBi's à la carte lunch is one of the city's great bargains. Kricket built an entire model around quality without the overhead of fine dining theatre. Ambassadors Clubhouse manages to hold a Michelin star while feeling like a place you can actually celebrate in rather than merely admire.
The path forward isn't lower ambition. It's more imagination about who gets through the door. Indian fine dining in London has spent a decade earning its seat at the table. The next challenge is making sure the table itself is a little wider.
What do you think? Is the price worth it — or has Indian fine dining priced out the very people it should be feeding? Tell us.