I wanted this to feel like an anti-club – cool enough that everybody can come. The booths in the Dishoom King’s Cross are modelled after Bombay local trains and the stitching of the seats is same as seen in Eros Cinema. There is a 50-page training guide we give our staff to explain the different things and references to our visitors. King’s Cross Dishoom is our story of the Independence struggle.
In the back we have got some pictures of Homai Vyarawalla (India’s first woman photojournalist) and there is a little gallery which has her photographs from Independence era – right from the salt march to voting for Partition, to Gandhiji’s assassination, funeral and so on. So you see a lot of Independence era posters on the left as you enter. We also imagined that he was into politics and active in the Independence movement. In two decades he had taken over the whole place and was running an Irani cafe. And a young Irani in 1928 came there and set up a chai store. We imagined the site to be a big old godown behind VT station. For instance, take our biggest Dishoom at King’s Cross. Our creative vision is quite simple - each Dishoom weaves around a story of Bombay. Where does all the creativity behind each Dishoom come from?Įvery Dishoom is a sort of love letter to different aspects of Bombay. I think that even receiving awards is lovely but you have to be careful because the moment you start thinking you deserved this, it’s lost. So sometimes you would find a group of people eating very inexpensive food at Dishoom and at the same time at the next table, you might see Lakshmi Mittal or some celebrities drinking champagne. The porridge is bottomless in the morning breakfast. In the daytime we top up the chai, so it is bottomless chai till 5 pm. So at 10-11 pounds you can have a delicious lunch with a beer. You could have a dal at 5 pounds, a Roomali roti for a couple of pounds and you can have a beer for 3-4 pounds. Besides, our pricing is pretty affordable. I want that food here is as good as any Indian food served anywhere. We are obsessed with making sure that the food and service are great, the environment is beautiful and the food is inexpensive. What makes Dishoom the most popular eatery in the UK? Eventually, I and my cousin Kavi Thakrar started Dishoom in 2010 with two other partners. We were quite inspired by this and saw it as a big opportunity. Especially, the way Irani cafes brought people together over food. I think it’s because Bombay has lots of shared spaces like the Chowpatty beach and the Irani cafes. So I grew with a strong obsession for Indian history, mythology and culture.Īlso, the fun and energy of Bombay is infectious. I used to travel with Ba and Dada - we are Gujaratis from Porbandar originally -all over India. Living here in London, I grew up with a strong affinity to Bombay where my grandmother still stays.
To me, Dishoom is a lovely platform to express my feelings about India.