New Punjab Club

A Room Built on Contrast

Central Hong Kong's dining corridor along Wyndham Street is better known for European fine dining and Japanese omakase than for the clay-oven cooking of northwest India. The visual register inside New Punjab Club reinforces that sense of deliberate displacement: colonial-era room proportions and retro detailing sit directly alongside contemporary South Asian artwork, a combination that signals something more considered than a heritage pastiche. The tension is the point. This is a room that understands its own position — occupying the same price tier and reservation culture as neighbours who serve French sauces and aged beef, while drawing its entire reference set from the tandoor traditions of Punjab and the culinary inheritance of the Mughal courts.

That positioning matters more than it might first appear. Hong Kong's fine-dining market has historically clustered around Cantonese cooking, where restaurants like Forum hold deeply institutionalised prestige, and the French and Italian traditions, represented at the top tier by Caprice, Amber, and 8½ Otto e Mezzo Bombana. Indian cuisine at fine-dining prices, with Michelin validation, is a genuinely different proposition — and that difference is what the room, the menu, and the awards record are all quietly arguing.

How the Menu Makes Its Case

The structure of the menu at New Punjab Club is itself an editorial statement. Rather than attempting a pan-Indian survey , the approach that characterises a certain category of upscale Indian restaurant in international cities , the kitchen holds its focus tightly on Punjab and its western border with Pakistan. This is a meaningful restriction. The state of Punjab straddles one of the most historically significant culinary fault lines in South Asia: the convergence of Sikh, Muslim, and Hindu cooking traditions, each of which contributed techniques and ingredients that became foundational to north Indian cuisine as it is now understood globally.

Dishes from the tandoor form the structural spine of what's on offer. The goat seekh kebab , ground meat worked onto skewers and cooked at high heat in the clay oven , is one of the kitchen's more consistently noted preparations, a dish where the quality of the meat, the moisture management, and the char level have no place to hide. The keema pau made with mutton draws from the street-food register of the subcontinent's west, where the pau (soft roll) functions as the vehicle for spiced minced meat in a way that owes as much to Karachi's tiffin culture as to any formal Punjabi tradition.

The signature, though, is the butter chicken , listed here as 'Mughal Room Makhani', a name that does some specific intellectual work. Attaching it to the Mughal Room rather than presenting it as a generic dish signals that this kitchen is aware of the cooking's genealogy: the Makhani sauce tradition has documented roots in the Mughlai cuisine that evolved in the imperial kitchens of Delhi and was later codified by restaurateurs in mid-twentieth century India. Naming it that way at a Michelin-starred level is an implicit claim about fidelity and historical consciousness. Whether the execution justifies that claim is something the plate answers. The laccha paratha , layered, flaky, cooked on the tawa , sits alongside as the appropriate accompaniment to Mughal-lineage gravies, and its presence on the menu says something about the kitchen's commitment to serving food in contextually coherent combinations rather than merely producing showpiece dishes.

The Awards Record in Context

New Punjab Club holds a Michelin star as of 2024 and has appeared in Opinionated About Dining's ranking of the leading restaurants in Asia for three consecutive years: 89th in 2023, 76th in 2024, and 81st in 2025. The OAD list is compiled from the scored dining experiences of a self-selecting population of serious eaters and food professionals, which means the rankings carry a different kind of signal than a single inspector's visit. Three consecutive placements, with a significant climb between 2023 and 2024, indicate a kitchen that is performing consistently at a level that repeat visitors notice.

In the context of the Hong Kong scene, that track record places New Punjab Club in a peer set that includes the European and Japanese fine-dining rooms rather than in competition with the city's Indian restaurant market more broadly. The $$$ price range aligns it with venues like Ta Vie rather than the $$$$ bracket occupied by Caprice or 8½ Otto e Mezzo Bombana, which makes it one of the more accessible entry points into Michelin-recognised cooking in Central. Globally, the category of award-holding restaurants focused on South Asian regional cooking , rather than a generalised 'Indian' menu , is a relatively small one. The equivalents in other cities tend to operate in very different market contexts, without the sustained dual recognition from Michelin and the OAD list that New Punjab Club has accumulated. For reference, other Michelin-recognised destinations globally, from Le Bernardin in New York to Alain Ducasse at Louis XV in Monte Carlo, demonstrate how different culinary traditions can carry equal critical weight when the kitchen executes at that register.

Chef Palash Mitra and the Kitchen's Orientation

Chef Palash Mitra leads the kitchen. Beyond the name, the relevant point here is less biographical than structural: the consistency of OAD scores over three years, combined with Michelin recognition, suggests a kitchen that has stabilised around a clear point of view. Kitchens that oscillate in approach or chase trend-driven menu updates tend not to hold sustained positions in scoring-based lists like OAD. The discipline of limiting the menu's geography to Punjab and its border region, while executing at a price point that competes with European fine dining, reflects a kitchen confident enough in its source material to resist expanding the brief.

Planning a Visit

New Punjab Club operates lunch service Tuesday through Sunday (noon to 2:30 PM) and dinner service every night, with Friday and Saturday running until 11 PM and the rest of the week to 10:30 PM. Monday is dinner-only. The address is the World Wide Commercial Building at 34 Wyndham Street, Central , a building that places it in the middle of Hong Kong's most competitive dining corridor, walking distance from the bars and wine rooms that complete a Central evening.

The combination of Michelin recognition, OAD presence, and a $$$ price range means the restaurant draws both locals who know what it is and international visitors discovering it through awards lists. Booking ahead is advisable, particularly for Friday and Saturday dinner. Google reviews average 4.5 across 492 ratings, which for a Michelin-starred room reflects genuine breadth of satisfaction rather than a narrow enthusiast audience.

For broader planning across the city, the full Hong Kong restaurants guide maps the wider scene. The Hong Kong bars guide is useful for pre- or post-dinner options in the same neighbourhood, and the Hong Kong hotels guide covers accommodation if you're building a stay around a Central dining itinerary. Additional resources covering Hong Kong experiences and Hong Kong wineries round out the picture for multi-day visits.

How New Punjab Club Compares: Practical Quick Reference

Frequently Asked Questions

What dish is New Punjab Club famous for?

The 'Mughal Room Makhani' , the kitchen's version of butter chicken , is the signature. The name is deliberate, referencing the Mughlai culinary tradition from which the Makhani style of sauce descends. The goat seekh kebab and the mutton keema pau are the other preparations most consistently noted by critics and OAD contributors. Chef Palash Mitra's menu keeps its focus on Punjab and the Pakistan border region, so these dishes appear as part of a coherent regional argument rather than a broad Indian survey.

What is the overall feel of New Punjab Club?

The room pairs retro colonial proportions with contemporary South Asian artwork , a combination that sits in deliberate tension with the fine-dining context of Wyndham Street. At $$$ pricing with a Michelin star and three consecutive OAD top-Asia rankings (76th in 2024), the atmosphere matches the ambition: this is a kitchen making a serious case for Punjabi cooking inside Hong Kong's most competitive restaurant corridor, without the visual language of either a heritage Indian restaurant or a European fine-dining room.

Can I bring children to New Punjab Club?

Menu's flavour profile , tandoor cooking, Mughal-lineage gravies, dishes like laccha paratha , is accessible enough that older children comfortable with north Indian cooking would find familiar reference points. That said, the context is a Michelin-starred room at $$$ pricing in Central Hong Kong, which sits closer to the adult fine-dining peer set of venues like 8½ Otto e Mezzo Bombana or Atomix in New York than a family restaurant. Whether it's appropriate depends less on the food and more on whether the children in question are comfortable in that kind of room and at that price point.