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Telegraph
17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
‘My new favourite Indian restaurant': William Sitwell reviews Permit Room, London
Permit rooms came into being in Bombay after the Bombay Prohibition Act of 1949. They allowed those who wished to partake of liquor 'for health reasons' to do so once they'd secured a permit – and enabled civil servants to revel in another layer of exquisite bureaucracy, with more paperwork, files and rubber stamps. The concept is recalled in the name of a new restaurant in the Dishoom portfolio, adding to the evocative nature of the place. Permit Room on Portobello Road (at an address I remember way back when as First Floor, a restaurant that was a little grungy, all dark wood, dim lighting and candles) is decked out in colonial rattan, with lots of tropical plants and South Asian art. It's the fourth in Dishoom's offshoot group of Permit Rooms (Brighton, Oxford and Cambridge are lucky to have the others) and I wish they'd look kindly upon me, see the desperate yearning in my eyes, and open one near me at home. West Somerset needs a Permit Room; it needs Dishoom's co-founder cousins Shamil and Kavi Thakrar to put a pin in, say, Wiveliscombe, and grant us an establishment with fabulous staff, serene bedrooms (they call them lodgings), a wonderful bar (epic negronis…) and, at its heart, a seminal Indian restaurant. The menu offers a colourful array of dishes, some of which are solidly mainstream Indian but just epic examples of them. We started with prawn recheado, which the menu declares is a 'Goan go-to' (not that I ever had the pleasure of eating it when I languished in Goa post-school, aged 17). It's a chilli-hot dish of prawns that gets the beads of sweat gathering and had us glugging their very decent and fresh Spanish garnacha, chosen from a tight list. Then the real fun started, as I tested them on their versions of standard Indian-restaurant fare: lamb curry, tandoori chicken, rice and naan. Our half-chicken tandoori was wonderfully tender, delivering a whole leg and breast rather than ubiquitous anonymous cubes of meat. It was properly charred, with a subtle hint of chilli, and it came with a garnish you actually wanted to eat – a refreshing kachumber (finely chopped cucumber, onion and tomato), along with a little dish of zesty green chutney. There was a rich and moreish bowl of deep, dark lamb curry, the lamb similarly tender and the spicing modest. I wanted lashings upon lashings of the glorious stuff. Even better was a bowl of black daal, stewed for 24 hours – a dish I'd like to eat at least once a week for the rest of my life (even if the amount of ghee in it would, I suspect, limit the rest of my life to mere weeks). Rice was fluffy and a plate of Tenderstem broccoli a tremendous line in the sand: look at this broccoli, charred and cooked to just the right side of al dente, and with not so much as a teaspoon of wretched sauce to ruin it. Along with some puffy naans, it was all a picture of kaleidoscopic, perky and on-point Indian cookery. We ate all the puds – their error, not our greed, as they brought a chocolate brownie by mistake. But it was a great mistake, such was its richness and softness, the wonder of milky malai (clotted cream of the subcontinent) lifting the dish further with hints of sweet jaggery and the subtlest tingle of chilli. The coconut caramel custard, meanwhile, had a decent wobble and good richness, and a gulab jamun was very sweet and swimming in rum.
Skift
11-07-2025
- Business
- Skift
Dishoom in the UK: A Cult Restaurant Brand Opens an Inn
Dishoom's first foray into hotel-style lodging is an example of a cult restaurant brand extending its reach. The test is one key, two rooms, with the vibe of eccentric Bombay in Notting Hill. Dishoom, the U.K.-based restaurant group known for its Bombay-inspired design and cult following, has launched its first overnight lodging, with a two-bedroom apartment located above its new Permit Room bar on London's Portobello Road. The launch marks the brand's first operational step into hospitality, extending its immersive dining experience into a residential format. Priced at £700 (about $950) per night with a two-night minimum, the Permit Room Lodgings are not positioned as a traditional hotel. They're instead seen as a test of the brand's appeal for overnight stays. "Well, in classic Dishoom fashion, we somewhat stumbled into the idea while designing Permit Room Portobello," CEO Brian Trollip told Skift. "The building itself has history as it use
Times
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Bed and Biryani? Inside Dishoom's first lodgings in Notting Hill
When the cousins Shamil and Kavi Thakrar launched Dishoom in London in 2010, they wanted to present a different face of India, away from the clichés of Bollywood, curry houses and the days of the Raj. 'When you go to Bombay, it's not really any of those things,' Shamil says. 'There's lots of deco and modern British architecture, and people don't eat curry that much, but more street food. We wanted to build on that. To say, 'Curry is great, but have you tried this?' It's our love letter to Bombay's best comfort food.' The restaurant group has become hugely popular, expanding to seven venues in London and more in Manchester, Birmingham and Edinburgh. More recently it has added a small group of Bombay-style pubs, called Permit Room, in Notting Hill in London, Brighton, Oxford and Cambridge. The London venue is the first to have its own lodgings — a two-bedroom apartment that opened this week. Dishoom is styled after the Irani cafés that were started by immigrants from Iran in the early 20th century, largely in the state of Gujarat, which Bombay — now Mumbai — used to be part of. A bit like our own greasy spoons, they were the social lungs of the city, where every tier of society would go to break bread. The cousins' restaurants riff off the look, with their ceiling fans, sepia portraits, old mirrors and marble tables. The Permit Rooms are inspired by the illicit drinking culture that emerged after independence in India. Buoyed by a spirit of Gandhian virtue and purity, many states banned alcohol, so Goan 'aunties', who as Christians were less proscriptive, would serve drinks in their front rooms (and install an egg seller outside to signal that they were open). When the law was relaxed in 1973 you could then apply for a permit to say you could drink alcohol. (There was also a specific 'emergency permit' to cover champagne and cognac.) So the permit room emerged as a drinking den. Technically the new Permit Room Lodgings are rooms above a pub, on a prime corner site on Portobello Road. Banish any thoughts of beer-stained carpets and uneven ceilings, though — this is boutique living all the way. Walk through your private side entrance and up the stairs to the mid-century-styled apartment and you find yourself in another world: one of a successful, design-savvy Bombayite. • 27 of the best hotels in London From its second-floor windows you feel you are right on top of the market that gathers most days, and there is a view all the way from the antique shops at the top of the road, through the vegetable stalls to the famous flower stand just below you. I can't think of a more vibrant and immediate view from any hotel window in London (and no, I'm not using those words as code to mean noisy: secondary glazing ensures absolute peace when you want it). The owners like to invent a backstory for every opening and here we have the bachelor pad of a rich Indian artist. Walking into the sitting room, with its dark parquet flooring, burnt orange and umber colour palette, filled bookshelves and Indian paintings on the wall (sourced from a gallerist in Los Angeles), the first thing my wife and I were drawn to was the turntable and its collection of twenty or so records. I felt very seen — Grace Jones, the Velvet Underground, Blondie, Ziggy Stardust … not a bum note to be found. Am I such a walking cliché? We dialled the telephone (mid-century, of course), ordered a welcoming round of complimentary drinks from the bar downstairs and boogied to Marvin Gaye as we explored the two double bedrooms with their huge solid wood beds and the en suite bathrooms, all marble and brass fittings. 'We like to transport you a bit, to make everything feel a bit different,' the owners say. • 22 of the best affordable hotels in London under £200 It is also inspired by the early lodging houses of Bombay, simple hotels dating from the 1860s. When researching the look for their own rooms, the Thakrar cousins travelled to the city to explore the old houses there, plus private residences and art deco hotels. The New Vasantashram and Bentley's hotels, both built around the time of Indian independence in 1947, were particular inspiration, especially for the handcrafted simplicity of the beds. Sea Green Hotel on Marine Drive inspired the colour scheme and the art deco flourishes that are echoed in the Lodging's doors and walls. By coincidence, the site at 186 Portobello Road used to be home to the Colville Hotel before becoming an Irish/West Indian pub known infamously as the Pisshouse — a piece of social history that the cousins wisely decided not to draw on — so the new venture marks the coming together of two very different stories of hospitality. Back in the sitting room, the large wardrobe revealed itself actually to be a drinks cabinet. The words 'drinks inside', written in a slightly wonky, amateurish hand, were another of those 'transportative touches' that the Thakrars had mentioned, and I felt nostalgia for an era that I never knew in a city that I'd never visited. Inside were bottles of premixed cocktails, including Dishoom's ever-popular gimlet flavoured with dill and its negroni with sherry, apricot liqueur and calvados. Tempting as it was, we couldn't spend the whole evening drinking in our rooms: there was eating and drinking to be done downstairs in the Permit Room's first-floor dining room. • Read our full guide to London No need for any permits in Portobello, of course. The menu leans into the drinks side of things (the Feni Martini, with its nod to Indian moonshine, and Dishoom IPA come highly recommended) and the snacks to go with it. We started with plates of roasted peanuts with onion, tomato, chilli and lime, crispy spinach leaves with spiced yoghurt and fresh pomegranate, and chicken pick-me-ups — a kind of Indo-Chinese KFC rolled in red chilli chutney, before moving on to curries and a rich and creamy black daal. After that lot, we were grateful we only had to climb one flight of stairs to our beds. The next morning breakfast was delivered to our rooms under silver cloches: Dishoom's famous bacon naan roll, buttery chilli cheese crumpets with fried eggs and gooey French toast with chilli honey and fresh berries. All this as the cheery sound of the market setting up for another day drifted through our windows. It was as if they were building the film set of Notting Hill just for Turnbull was a guest of Permit Room, which has two nights' B&B for four from £1,400 (
Time Out
09-05-2025
- Business
- Time Out
Dishoom is opening a tiny hotel in London
This week London will see the arrival of Dishoom's newest outpost, the Permit Room, in Notting Hill. Now it's been revealed that their new hangout is also a teeny tiny hotel, with rooms to rent above the resto which resides inside a three-story building. If you're not familiar with Dishoom, where have you been? Since opening its first spot in Covent Garden in 2010, the elevated Indian joint has become one of London's most dependable chains. Inspired by Bombay cafés of the 20th century, its most popular dishes include a creamy black daal, a rich 'chicken ruby' curry and egg and bacon breakfast naans. Soon two bedrooms will be available to rent above the new all day bar-café, which officially opens on Friday, May 9. Dishoom founders Shamil Thakrar and Kavi Thakrar told Bloomberg that the rooms aren't quite finished yet, and they are still deciding how much each one will go for, and how long the minimum stay will be, although it's likely to be a two-night minimum with a maximum of one week. 'We don't want it to be so expensive people can't afford it,' Kavi said. The founders suggested that residents in the hotel rooms might be able to have food from the restaurant delivered to their rooms, but this is not confirmed yet, while guests will have priority booking of the downstairs tables. 'The concept of having bacon naan first thing in the morning when you roll out of bed in your pj's is alluring,' Kavi told Bloomberg. 'We imagine people sitting on the sofa and having food delivered to them.' Dishoom already has Permit Rooms in Brighton, Cambridge and Oxford, but this will be the first to open in the capital. Dishoom describes its sister brand as 'a salute to Bombay's permit rooms, beer bars and drinking holes' – bars that opened in the Indian capital in the 1970s after prohibition was lifted.
Bloomberg
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Bloomberg
Top London Restaurant Dishoom Is Opening a (Tiny) Hotel
Last Friday night on London's Portobello Road, one corner pub was particularly buzzy, even for bustling Notting Hill. But if you tried to walk in, you were politely turned away with some free drink tickets. The Dishoom Permit Room Portobello is in soft opening and doesn't officially welcome in the public until Friday, May 9. This is the fourth Permit Room in the UK but the first London outpost of the group's India-inspired drinking establishment. (It also operates 10 cafes.) And there's another element to this location that will attract the Dishoom faithful: It will be the brand's first property to offer lodgings.
