BiBi

Mayfair's Indian Counter at Its Most Considered

North Audley Street, running north from Grosvenor Square toward Selfridges, is the kind of Mayfair address that reads quiet on a map but rewards a closer look. The block carries a mix of independent traders and quietly serious restaurants, and BiBi fits that register precisely. Approached from the street, the heated terrace signals hospitality before you reach the door; inside, the room is long, narrow, and deliberately dim, with an open kitchen running along one wall and black-leather booths lining the other. Most of the seats press up against the counter overlooking the chefs. That configuration is not incidental: it shapes how the meal unfolds.

Mayfair's dining offer has always leaned toward the formal European tradition, with rooms like Sketch, The Lecture Room and Library, Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, and The Ledbury anchoring a certain expectation of what a high-spend meal in W1 looks like. BiBi sits in that same price bracket, four pound signs, but reframes what that bracket means. The cuisine is Indian; the format is counter-led and sociable; the pacing is timed rather than ceremonial. It is not the first serious Indian address in Mayfair, Gymkhana, also from the JKS Group, holds two Michelin stars a short walk away, but it represents a different register within the same conversation.

The Scene BiBi Belongs To

London's Indian restaurant scene has expanded sharply at both ends of the spectrum over the past decade, from street-food-rooted concepts to tasting-menu formats with serious wine programs. BiBi occupies the latter tier. Part of the JKS Group portfolio, which also includes Sabor, Hoppers, and Gymkhana, it arrived as one of the more anticipated Indian openings in recent memory, and the editorial record has largely confirmed that position. A Michelin Plate in both 2024 and 2025, combined with an Opinionated About Dining ranking of #502 in Europe for 2024, places it clearly inside the serious Indian dining conversation in the capital.

The comparison that matters is not BiBi against a generalist Mayfair fine-dining room, but BiBi against the wider shift in how ambitious Indian cooking is being framed in global cities. In Bangkok, Gaa takes a similar approach of transplanting Indian-rooted technique into a fine-dining counter format. In London, the JKS Group has consistently shown that the highest expression of a regional cuisine does not require European presentation conventions to command a European fine-dining price point.

Cooking Rooted in Tradition, Extended by Technique

Chef Chet Sharma trained at L'Enclume in Cartmel and Moor Hall in Aughton, two of England's most technique-driven kitchens. That background matters not as biography but as credential: it signals a kitchen comfortable with precision and fermentation, with long-process cookery and considered plate architecture. What distinguishes BiBi is that those tools are placed entirely in service of Indian flavour logic rather than European idiom. Spice is the organizing principle, not garnish.

The menu runs across two tasting formats and a carte, built around small plates, chaat, and grilled dishes. Family influence is woven into the structure: the two evening tasting menus are named Kamal and Ranjana, after Sharma's grandmothers, both referred to as bibis in the family's tradition. A dish drawing on his grandfather's Lahori chicken recipe appears on the menu as direct lineage, not as novelty. Fermented chilli lifts okra; roomali roti and pilau rice are treated as central rather than supplementary. The sourcing of Indian ingredients through a fine-dining lens, and the building of layers rather than a single dominant note, reflects the same discipline found at the kitchens where Sharma trained, applied here to a culinary tradition that was always built on complexity.

The wine list has been assembled with the food pairing challenge in mind. Indian spice patterns are notoriously difficult to match with conventional European wine logic, and a program designed around the kitchen rather than imported from a generic luxury template is part of what separates this tier of Indian dining from the broader market. Prices reflect the Mayfair address and the tasting format.

The Counter as the Default Seat

Counter dining has become a reliable signal of a kitchen's confidence. In Tokyo's omakase rooms, in the Nordic tasting-menu format, and increasingly in London's more serious independent openings, the counter signals that the kitchen wants to be seen. At BiBi, where the open-plan layout was clearly designed around this dynamic, the counter is not a secondary option for solo diners. It is the intended experience, and reserving one of those seats will add a direct line of sight to the preparation that the booth seats simply cannot match.

The service approach at BiBi has drawn consistent praise across the critical record: charming, paced, and energetic without tipping into performance. The room operates at a lively pitch, aided by a considered soundtrack. For those accustomed to the more measured formality of rooms like CORE by Clare Smyth, the sociable energy here is a deliberate stylistic choice rather than an absence of formality.

Placing BiBi in the Wider London Dining Map

The city's dining scene extends well beyond Mayfair's concentration of high-spend rooms; regional British cooking at destination level can be found further afield at The Fat Duck in Bray, Gidleigh Park in Chagford, Hand and Flowers in Marlow, and Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons in Great Milton, among others.