As well as a few breakfast options, there are filled rotis, a couple of soups, salads, grills, biryanis and so on, all for sharing. The room, with its open kitchen and bustling, young, mostly non-Indian waiters, has a jolly buzz and when they bring all of us in the queue a glass of hot chai – sweet milky tea flavoured with cardamom – I begin to hope that everything will be fine.Īs we discover when we eventually get to our banquette, there are some good things here, with the emphasis on the word "some". But it is not my own time, so we settle down by the door. There is very little in London, food-wise, that is genuinely worth queuing for. If this were my own time, I would have turned on my heels. For irritating reasons known only to themselves, they refuse to take bookings, and when we get there it is heaving.
I suspect that it soon will be.īecause it appears to be a success. It feels like the sort of place that ought to be in Basingstoke town centre. Granted, there are other such mid-market chains next door, including a Jamie's Italian, but that only adds to the sense of dislocation. The most curious aspect of the place is that it is here, a grilled lobster's throw from The Ivy. Most of all, check out the framed vintage Bollywood-style adverts, which look as though they were bought by the yard. Check out the black and white tiled floors and marble tabletops, the grey banquettes and slabs of oak panelling. It is instead a hunk of corporate image management, a fully realised "concept" which could be flat-packed and distributed to every brand-heavy high street in the land.
That question is: where do you go to eat if you fancy Indian food but are tired of your local curry house? For if Dishoom feels like anything, it ain't a slice of old Bombay. Meal for two, including wine and service £70ĭishoom, a new, self-styled Bombay Café in London's West End, feels like the answer to a question nobody is asking.
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