Bougie parlour for abhang-ingtime

42 at Gymkhana 42 Albemarle Street, W1

- Josh Barrie

First of all, 42 at Gymkhana is breathtakingly beautiful. The JKS restaurant group knows what it’s doing with aesthetics. It's what you want to see when you walk into a cocktail lounge above a two Michelin-starred Indian restaurant. Words like “intimate” and “opulent” are par for the course.

I'd have been surprised to see anything other than soft furnishings and low lighting; long and sweeping drapes; great lamps, leopard-print ornaments and tinkling chandeliers. It's a fabulous pastiche of high India, a place to sit and listen to late-night DJs before or after succulent lamb chops. I like the word succulent.