Dishoom to open its first rooms at Notting Hill restaurant

Dishoom is set to launch rooms at its London Notting Hill site next month.

Permit Room Portobello will include its first Lodging Houses, which were traditionally operated by Parsi proprietors in the 1860s across India to offer refuge for migrants and travellers.

The two-bedroom Lodging House in Notting Hill is located atop the former site of the Colville hotel, which later became an Irish/West Indian public house known by many as the ‘Pisshouse’.

It marks the Indian restaurant group’s first foray into accommodation after launching its debut Bombay-style old Irani café in London’s Covent Garden in 2010.

Permit Room Portobello is also Dishoom’s first London-based Permit Room, which the group started as a spin-off bar in 2023 in Brighton before rolling it out across Cambridge and Oxford.

The Notting Hill site is spread across three floors. Plans submitted to the council earlier this year revealed the project was estimated to have cost up to £2m.

The ground and first floors will open for breakfast, lunch and dinner, serving the likes of Permit Room French toast, Dishoom bacon naan roll, black daal, crispy spinach chaat and ice-cream sandwich, while the top floor will be home to the bedrooms.

Permit Room Portobello has also partnered with DJ Rohan Rakhit, a mainstay of Asian underground crew Daytimers, to oversee sets on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays.

Dishoom operates 10 restaurants under its main brand, including a 235-cover site in Battersea Power Station that launched in 2023, and Permit Room bars in Brighton, Cambridge and Oxford.

In March, the group said it was close to securing a site in New York – its first overseas restaurant in the United States – and it has also since revealed plans to bolster its regional offering through additional launches in Glasgow and Leeds.

Permit Room Portobello is opening on 9 May.