Almost every Londoner I ask about their favorite Indian restaurant in town ends up giving me the same answer: Dishoom. It's fair to say that this eatery has captured the collective imagination with co-founders Shamil and Kavi Thakrar's contagiously uplifting, mouthwatering reinterpretation of Indian street food, which, since the launch of their first restaurant in Covent Garden in 2010, has earned the two and their 1,800-person team an unyielding cult following, leading to a total of over a dozen locations across the UK.
Now, picture Dishoom within a first-of-its-kind boutique stay format brought to life by soulful design, hospitality, and artistry. You've got a recipe for success, and a new contender for a mention in our shortlist of the best hotels in London.
Inaugurated this month in the heart of Notting Hill, West London, Permit Room Portobello, the fourth venture part of the group's namesake food and beverage sibling business, which, following openings in Brighton, Cambridge, and Oxford, now marks its debut into accommodation, lives up to the transportative atmosphere Dishoom has become synonymous with over the past 15 years. Like all of the portfolio's addresses, the space, situated within a beautifully restored building that, between the mid-19th and the mid-20th centuries, was home to the Colville Hotel before becoming a beloved Irish-West Indian public house, and spanning three floors, echoes the vibrant ambiance of traditional Irani cafés (Persian-style coffee shops set up by Zoroastrian Irani immigrants who relocated to India between the 19th and the 20th centuries).
As suggested by its name, though, it was Bombay's 1950s clandestine 'Aunty Bars' — later known as 'permit rooms' after the end of the alcohol prohibition era — where residents gathered to drink and socialize in the city under the cover of darkness, that lent the bohemian spirit now sitting at the heart of Nottingham-based studio and long-term Dishoom collaborators Macaulay Sinclair's creative vision for this bar and restaurant with rooms.
A Journey Through Cultures — Inside Permit Room Portobello
The first images of Permit Room Portobello aren't the only ones to demonstrate how they nailed the brief. "Decked, draped, and decorated in the textures, motifs, and colors of a quintessentially Bombay country club, Dishoom's latest flavorful foray will whisk you off the cool London streets and into a warm Indian embrace," Livingetc's Home Wellness Writer, Amiya Baratan, who grew up by the country's Southeastern coast in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, but "is no stranger to the buzzing, jazzy streets of Maharashtra's capital city, Mumbai (FKA Bombay)," tells me of her instant impressions of the stay.
From the checkered tables of its breakfast and dining areas, which, she explains, remind her of her grandmother's kitchen, clad in patterned tablecloths, and the vintage, wood-carved chairs oozing nostalgia throughout, to the cool, classic steel tumblers — "a surprisingly common staple across an otherwise culturally diverse nation whose style varies from the top of the map to the tip of the coast" — "every nook and corner of this charming new hotel feels authentically Indian," Amiya says.
For her, Permit Room Portobello is a welcome addition to the London travel scene, as its attempt at capturing her homeland's layered decor heritage "means a lot in a sea of far from traditional and, perhaps, a little out-of-touch 'resto-inns' that never seem to fully reflect the true interior landscape of India," she explains wholeheartedly.
A Nostalgia-Fueled, People-First Vision of Hospitality
"Some of our most cherished memories are from staying with friends and family in Bombay. The types of visits where the door is wide open and you're ushered inside to be taken care of," co-founders Shamil and Kavi Thakrar say of the emotional trigger behind the Permit Room spin-off as a whole. It was "these feelings of nostalgia" that, together with a desire to look after people "to the best of our ability", convinced them to develop the project even further with their first-ever lodgings, which have hosted travelers from earlier this month.
Comprising a ground-floor breakfast and bar lounge, a dining room named after the now-defunct Notting Hill culinary institution, First Floor, placed on the level of the same name, and two en-suite bedrooms tucked away on the highest ground of 186A Portobello Road, complete with living room, the latest Permit Room is a crossroads of stories, people, and cultures.
"We thought, what if we could extend our hospitality to our guests even more fully? What if we could transport them to a romantic Bombay residence?" the two recall. In their collaboration with Macaulay Sinclair, which revived the establishment's decades-old hospitality legacy by fusing British eccentricity with the stylistic influences the studio picked up along the way while visiting Mumbai's Lodging Houses, private homes, and classic Deco hotels, they made their dream come true.
To craft it, the Nottingham-based firm looked to Kekee Manzil, the palatial home of pioneering Indian art gallerist and collector Kekoo Gandhy, an early promoter of the work of groundbreaking modern artists like K. H. Ara, S. H. Raza, K. K. Hebbar, and M. F. Husain, and his wife, Khorshed. Its influence on the eclectically beautiful, sophisticated essence of Permit Room Portobello's suites is especially felt in the shapeshifting collection of paintings that adorns its buttery, mint green, and tile blue walls, including zestful portraiture contributions from NYC-based artist Maya Varadaraj, San Francisco painter Nibha Kireddy, and Brooklyn-based everyday reteller Mustafa Mohsin.
Curated by Los Angeles gallery Rajiv Menon Contemporary, the selection — gathering vivid depictions of domesticity, relationships, and fantasy worlds alike, grappling with themes like identity, migration, mythology, and the body — strives, like the wider art platform, to bear witness to the reality of South Asia and its diasporas, putting previously underrepresented talents in the spotlight. As if the canvases hanging across the bedrooms and the sojourn's communal areas weren't enough to make Permit Room Portobello into a bucket list-worthy destination for the culture-obsessed traveler, the vinyl-powered soundtrack accompanying every globetrotter's sojourn was handpicked by the property's team in collaboration with the music connoisseurs at Rough Trade West, while printed matter comes courtesy of Shreeji News and Books for Cooks.
An ode to the timelessness of Indian craftsmanship, the lodgings, whose interiors draw from the elegant blend of tile, fabric, and woodwork of Mumbai's Bentley's Hotel, and the 1970s, pastel-shaded palette and paneling of the Sea Green Hotel, reunite more than 30 original furniture pieces sourced from across the city in an immersive dialogue between East and West.
Book your stay at Permit Room Portobello.
Keen to bring Dishoom's explosion of flavors home with you after your stay at the group's latest opening? Look no further than their debut coffee table book or dive into our restaurant design archives for more multisensory explorations of taste.
