Ambassadors Clubhouse is one of the newest additions to London’s Michelin-starred restaurant scene, picking up its first star in 2026 and becoming the UK’s first Michelin-starred Punjabi restaurant in the process. From the team behind Gymkhana, the restaurant takes inspiration from the grand party mansions of Punjab, with a menu rooted in the food and flavours of the region.
You’ll find it tucked away on Heddon Street, the cool little pedestrianised courtyard just off Regent Street that has quietly accumulated some seriously good restaurants over the past few years.
We visited on a Saturday lunchtime to try the considerably more affordable set menu as part of my ongoing search for the best value Michelin menus in London.
The Details
Ambassadors Clubhouse offers a Lunch & Pre-Theatre Menu for £36 for two courses or £45 for three. It’s unusually accessible for a Michelin set menu too, running every day from 12pm–4pm, as well as 5pm–6pm Monday to Thursday.
The menu includes a selection of papads, chutneys and raita for the table, followed by a choice of four starters and four mains, with two desserts if you opt for three courses. There’s a good mix of meat, seafood and vegetarian options, and inevitably, plenty of opportunities to add to the bill (we ordered the Paneer Potli Samosas for £15). A discretionary 15% service charge is also added.
Interiors
The experience starts before you’ve even properly entered the restaurant. Push through the enormous black door and you arrive at a reception desk, with just a glimpse of the restaurant through a heavy curtained doorway beyond. It all feels suitably dramatic.
Inside, the restaurant is gorgeous. Glamorous, maximalist and dimly lit, with artwork covering the walls, columns, mirrored tiles, chandeliers, patterned carpets and plenty of leather. We visited on a Saturday lunchtime and it was already fairly busy, but I can imagine this room really coming alive at night. We sat at the counter surrounding the central bar, but there’s also a covered outdoor area and another lounge and dining space downstairs. This is emphatically not your stereotypical hushed, white-tablecloth Michelin restaurant, and all the better for it.
Drinks
We weren’t drinking at lunch, so kept things simple with a couple of alcohol-free Cobra beers at £6.50 each. If you are drinking, there’s a 375ml carafe of either red or white wine available alongside the set menu for £20, which looks like a fairly sensible option for two over lunch.
Starters & Snacks
The meal starts with a selection of papads accompanied by Hari aam chutney, BBQ imli chutney and mooli raita. The papads themselves were great, but it was the accompaniments that really stood out. In fact, the chutneys were excellent across the board throughout the meal.
Of our starters, the Lamb Shami Bun Kebab with Lahori chutney was the clear winner. A soft, fried brioche-style bun filled with richly spiced lamb, fresh raw onion and plenty of chutney. Rich, punchy and exactly the sort of food I’d hoped we were in for.
The Tawa Masala Crab Bhurji Cheela was less successful for me. The flavour was good, but texturally it was all a little wet and soft, and I found myself wanting something crisp or acidic to cut through it.
We also added the Paneer Potli Samosas for £15, which, in hindsight, we really didn’t need. Again, the flavour was good, but the pastry was thick and crumbly, not like your typical light samosa, and so they were neither here nor there. So the starters were a slightly mixed bag, with the chutneys being the real standouts.
Mains
Onto the mains and the Burrah Chicken Chops were excellent. The bone-in chicken was incredibly tender, sitting in a rich, tomato-heavy sauce with a gorgeous smoky tandoori flavour running through it. It came with a Kesari Chicken Keema Pilau, and this was the point where the meal really started to deliver.
The Ranjit Shahi Prawn Curry was equally good, but quite different. The sauce was milder, creamier and smoother, almost reminiscent of a butter chicken gravy, but beautifully seasoned, with the prawns cooked perfectly. It came with a lovely Lasooni Naan for mopping everything up.
Both were absolutely delicious, and I’d come back for either in a heartbeat.
Dessert
By this point we were far too full for dessert, but I really wanted to try the Gulab Jamun with Badami Pista Rabri, so asked whether we could take some away.
Our server’s immediate response was essentially, ‘No, we don’t do that’, before seemingly reconsidering, disappearing into the kitchen and returning with two portions packed into perfectly suitable takeaway boxes. So apparently they do…?!
I ate mine a few hours later on the sofa watching Rivals, which admittedly may not be the environment Michelin had in mind. But it was delicious. Heavy on the cardamom, with a lovely almond flavour running through the rabri, and a very good, belated end to the meal.
Service
Service throughout was relaxed and largely hands-off, which suited the restaurant perfectly. There was none of the unnecessary ceremony that can sometimes come with Michelin-starred dining, and this certainly isn’t somewhere you feel as though someone is waiting to refold your napkin every time you stand up.
The slightly abrupt initial response to our takeaway request was perhaps less polished than I’d expect at this level, but to his credit, our server immediately went to check with the kitchen and returned with exactly what we’d asked for.
Overall, the informal approach works here. Ambassadors Clubhouse feels like a restaurant you could just as easily visit for curry and drinks with friends as for a Michelin-starred meal, which is a large part of its appeal.
Value
At £36 for two courses or £45 for three, this is another very competitively priced Michelin-starred lunch, particularly given that it’s available on weekends. That alone makes it more useful than many of the set menus in this series, which are restricted to weekday lunches.
You also get a decent amount of food for the money. The papads, chutneys and raita are included before your starter arrives, and the mains come with their respective rice or naan, so there’s no need to start adding sides to complete the meal.
Of course, we did exactly that anyway. Between the £15 samosas, dessert, drinks and 15% service, our final bill was considerably more than the headline £36 per person. But none of those extras were necessary, and given how full we were by the end, the two-course menu alone would have been more than enough.
The only caveat for me is that the food wasn’t consistently brilliant across both courses. The starters were a little hit and miss, whereas the mains were genuinely excellent. For £36, though, the overall quality, quantity and setting still make this a very strong proposition.
Final Verdict
Ambassadors Clubhouse might be one of my favourite restaurants in this series for atmosphere alone. It’s glamorous and maximalist without being remotely stuffy, and feels just as well suited to a lively lunch or dinner with friends as it does to celebrating the fact that you’re eating somewhere with a Michelin star.
The food wasn’t flawless (I’d happily skip the samosas next time and the crab bhurji didn’t quite work for me texturally), but the Lamb Shami Bun Kebab was delicious and both mains were the sort of dishes I’d go back for in a heartbeat. Next time, I’ll be skipping the extra starters and exploring more of the main courses.
More than anything, I love that Ambassadors Clubhouse challenges the slightly outdated idea of what Michelin-starred dining has to look and feel like. There’s not a white tablecloth in sight, service isn’t needlessly attentive, and you’re eating generously portioned dishes designed for scooping up with naan rather than navigating with tweezers.
This is the place to bring that one friend who ‘doesn’t do that fancy Michelin nonsense’ and watch their arguments fall apart quicker than their chicken chops. Delightful.
Did you enjoy this article? You can read more articles in this ‘Best Value Michelin Menus’ series here.