What’s the buzz? Dishoom is the wildly successful Indian restaurant chain, founded in London’s Covent Garden in 2010 and today with 10 branches as well as four of its spin-off, the more drinks-focused Permit Room. Co-founder cousins Shamil and Kavi Thakrar have acquired this empire thanks to their flair for world-building — a theatrical, retro Mumbai that is always “Bombay” in the Dishoom-iverse — and the impressive trick of convincing their many loyal diners that queueing for a table can be fun. If you’ve ever seen a line snaking around the block in a buzzy part of London and wondered why they were all holding a glass of chai, you have borne witness to Dishoom.
Now the group is making its first foray into accommodation, albeit at a surprisingly tiny scale. The Permit Room Lodgings, which opened this month, is a two-bedroom apartment perched atop the restaurant’s newest branch in Notting Hill’s Portobello Road. It’s presumably a trial for more ambitious overnight plans; the co-founders describe it as a “gentle and thoughtful experiment”.
Location, location, location In the middle of Portobello Road, with the celebrated street market on its doorstep, the Permit Room is housed in a former pub once known colloquially as “the pisshouse”. Now it is done up in gorgeous green tiles, its new function announced by an old-fashioned painted sign that runs down the facade: “ground floor, bar & breakfast room; first floor, dining; second floor, lodgings.”
Checking in The ground floor bar is lively, approaching noisy, even when we arrive at 4pm on a Tuesday, but the first floor restaurant far less so, and by the time we’ve climbed to the air-conditioned, double-glazed set of rooms at the top of the building, the atmosphere is so tranquil that it almost comes as a shock to look down and see London.
It’s all warm tones and wood, with vintage furniture imported from India. The beds (a double in each room) are full hotel mode, linens the crisp white of new snow and eight pillows apiece. My friend, a new mum, looked at hers like you might the lover you thought lost at sea. Elsewhere it’s less hotel stay, more apartment-sitting for your most aspirational friend: a record player and vinyls, a smart selection of food books, magazines and properly curated art, happy house plants, a mini bar where you can mix your own cocktails. I demurred on this final perk, given there’s also a fake rotary phone you can use to call down and order drinks from the bar (or chai, which is free).
What about the food and drink? The restaurant’s name comes from 1970s Mumbai, when total prohibition gave way to strict liquor laws and drinkers were required to obtain a permit to buy alcohol in a select few bars. These old-fashioned permit rooms still exist alongside the city’s much cooler bar scene, though in my experience they are distinguished by a lack of natural light, decor that wouldn’t look out of place in a prison visitor room and menus offering beer, more beer and spirits served straight.
Luckily this Permit Room wears its inspiration lightly, and its drinks menu is vast and as creative as any cocktail bar’s. I order an orange wine martini up to the room because I am curious (read: sceptical) of such flagrant Frankensteining of trends, but I am wrong and it is delicious.
Later we move downstairs where we perch on bar stools and I learn of the existence of a margarita made with mezcal, jackfruit and toasted basmati, which looks like water in the glass and tastes like sweet smoke. We order cheesy garlic naan squares to go with it, and this unsophisticated pairing turns out to be my favourite food experience of my stay. I now know the joy of hot snacks with a strong drink, and understand it to be a tragedy that cocktail bars don’t come with a kitchen.
For dinner we move up to the high-ceilinged restaurant, where we sit beside a vast window with ritzy floor-to-ceiling curtains. You could almost forget you’re in a mid-market chain here, except for the fact the “specials” are printed on to the permanent menu and the many, many allergy check-ins. (Please ask the question — but last week at the Covent Garden Dishoom, I was asked if I had any allergies while ordering a top-up half of Kingfisher.)
Many of the larger dishes on the menu will be familiar to Dishoom regulars — the Ruby Murray chicken, the potent black daal — but there’s also a lot more snacky food: things in batter, samosas, salsa-topped masala eggs. Everything is delicious, although the emphasis on bar snacks means your options for a more formal meal are quite limited.
What to do? Portobello is clinging on to its status as London’s least disappointing tourist honeypot, despite the grave augury of a Harry Potter shop and phone case dealer opening side-by-side over the past year. This is a part of town where browsing can feel like an intellectual pursuit. There’s Rough Trade for records, The Notting Hill Bookshop, Books for Cooks (every chef you can name has been in here at some point in the last 30 years) and obviously the famous antiques, vintage and bric-a-brac market, which builds up through the week to culminate on Saturdays.
Notting Hill’s super-gentrification is well-documented but, unusually, this hasn’t ossified its food scene. Some of the city’s most hyped restaurants have opened here recently: Dorian, Canteen, Dove. There is big money to be spent locally. If you have it, and have booked really quite far in advance, go to Core by Clare Smyth or The Ledbury.
In the morning you can dabble in another queue beloved by Londoners and get pastries at Layla’s. But why bother when you have the Permit Room bar almost to yourself, and a bacon naan roll on the way?
Other guests? The restaurant skews young for the area, and is popular with groups. It feels like a different crowd to the one who might book the apartment. Particularly given . . .
The damage The lodging starts at £700 per night with a two-night minimum stay, which is steep for a spot above a pub that has none of the amenities of a big hotel, or even a bath. It seems more reasonable, though, if shared by two couples (both bedrooms are en suite), and breakfast and the mini bar are included.
Elevator pitch Why bother building the perfect London life when you can borrow it?
The Permit Room is at 186a Portobello Road, W11 1LA. Harriet Fitch Little was a guest of Dishoom (permitroom.co.uk)
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