Most tasting menus reach for variety by changing ingredients course to course. Yyaki does the opposite. It picks one, duck, and dares to hold your attention across nine courses without it ever growing repetitive. The wager is that a single protein, handled with enough range in cut, technique and texture, can carry an entire meal on its own. Judging by the reception since it opened inside Gurugram’s Japonico, that wager is paying off.
The pairing makes sense once you know the people behind it. Restaurateur Sahil Sambhi and chef Roberto Blondi already built Japonico into one of the city’s most reliably busy rooms, and Yyaki reads like the ambitious sibling concept, tucked within the same address but built to feel like an entirely separate universe. Guests enter through Japonico and pass into a second space beyond it, quieter and more focused, where a mirrored ceiling is the one visual thread connecting the two.
Inside, the room is organised around counters rather than tables, four of them, each its own micro restaurant with a dedicated chef team. There is one for teppanyaki, one for robata, one for sushi, and the centrepiece: a counter given over entirely to duck, seating a tight six to eight guests who watch every course come together an arm’s length away.
That duck counter is the real story. Across nine courses, no cut or cooking method is allowed to repeat itself. An amuse bouche of duck sandwiched between crisp skin crackling opens the meal, put together right at the counter. What follows ranges widely: a parfait tart layered with compressed green apple and hazelnut, a nugget with a molten centre dressed up with hollandaise, Beluga caviar and gold leaf, a delicate clear soup finished with shaved black truffle, a Cantonese style salad, and a nigiri built on duck skin instead of fish. Midway, the meal deliberately slows down, giving guests a break to wander over and watch the teppanyaki chef work before the heavier courses land: a smoked duck roll, a self assembled lettuce wrap, and a grilled duck leg served over chilli garlic fried rice with gochujang. Dessert brings the meal full circle with orange gelatine, a duck skin crumble and, notably, duck ice cream.
In a city where choosing a dine-in place in Jaipur often becomes a debate between who wants what, Silk Route suddenly feels like that rare middle ground. Someone wants noodles, someone wants something closer to home, someone wants to explore authentic Asian dishes no one has to compromise. And to me, that’s what makes it one of the best dine-in Jaipur spots right now. Not because it tries to be everything for everyone, but because it understands what bringing people together around a table really means.
Jhanvi Arora(Creative Lead)
About the Author– “Jhanvi writes at the intersection of flavor and feeling, where every dish is a story and every setting, an art. With a sharp palate for detail, she serves the F&B world one well-seasoned narrative at a time.”