GALA Restaurant: Indian Memory Reworked with a Playful Global Accent
Indian cooking with permission to wander
GALA is much more interesting than the old database label of simply ‘Indian’. The restaurant, on the ground floor of Century Hotel Apartments on Salaam Street, openly builds its menu around Indian flavours while letting them travel. That means familiar anchors such as dal makhni, butter chicken, biryani and tandoor cooking sit beside ideas such as khichdi risotto, Thai rice arancini and a choley bature taco. The kitchen also clearly marks vegan and Jain-friendly choices, which makes the breadth of the menu useful rather than cosmetic. This is a restaurant designed for mixed tables: vegetarians, meat eaters and diners who want spice without ordering the same curry they have eaten a hundred times before.
The fun is in the detail
The strongest reason to visit is the way recognisable dishes are nudged into new shapes without losing their Indian reference point. The current menu includes a ‘Gala’fied’ inside-out vada pav, crispy nadru with garlic butter sauce, lamb yakhni biryani, a clay-pot Champaran mutton and a Farid Flame chicken dish finished with egg-saffron butter. Dessert is even more playful: rasmalai tres leches, filter-coffee tiramisu and gulab jamun churros with rabri mousse all make the point quickly. Recent Abu Dhabi diners have also singled out the Burmese khow suey, nadru and the restaurant’s willingness to accommodate vegetarian requirements. None of that reads like a token fusion section; it feels like the organising idea of the place.
A useful city-centre address
GALA currently opens daily from 11:30am to 11:30pm, with direct reservations and private dining available. Weekday lunch also includes a compact Indian thali option, useful for anyone who wants the kitchen’s range without turning lunch into a long event. For Simply Abu Dhabi, the restaurant deserves attention because it sits outside the luxury-hotel orbit yet still behaves like a kitchen with something to say. Go with a group, order across street-food-inspired starters, tandoor plates and one of the slower curries, then leave room for the desserts. The result is contemporary Indian dining that is accessible, polished and notably less predictable than its unassuming Salaam Street address suggests.
Practical details
Location: Century Hotel Apartments, Salaam Street, Abu Dhabi, UAE
Cuisine: Modern Indian with global and Indo-Asian influences
Telephone: +971 2 449 0488 / +971 50 248 8506
Hours: Daily 11:30am-11:30pm
Dietary notes: Vegetarian, vegan and Jain-friendly choices are identified on the current menu
Editorial status: Open