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.
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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.
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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.
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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 us.
Tony Turnbull was a guest of Permit Room, which has two nights’ B&B for four from £1,400 (permitroom.co.uk)
