Located at a 5min walk from Kings Cross station and near to the St Pancras international station is one just past a myriad of food trucks is a unique eatery that scrapes right into the heart of the idiosyncrasies that make up Mumbai as a metro. A cultural mish mash and with food flavors to go back time and again; Dishoom is an eclectic mix of what I like to call an appeal to the heart of a passionate foodie. Too many restaurants have established themselves only to be too banal in their cuisine and eventually lose the queue to patronage but Dhishoom is quite the opposite of any kind of banality. But then another way to look at it; which I realized and got convinced today; is that you are successful if your food is embraced more by non indigenous crowd than your local native crowd.
So what is Dishoom you ask….Dishoom is the answer to your comfort zone of a Mumbai Irani Café in the the British heartland. My experience of an Irani Café is your tongue tasting tea through an extremely fine deposit of salted butter from the Bun Muska eaten moments before. And then no Irani Café is complete without its own signature Dhansak, Salli boti, Kheema Pav, Bhurjee and of course the sinful Lagan nu Custard.
Dishoom has every bit of the eccentric through its décor. Be it the ‘Beware of Glass’ represented in Hindi at the entrance to the wood and cane ‘easy chair’ in the main foyer or the old metal cupboard which claims that it stacks old files; the places bustles with the energy of a chic college cafeteria as the waiters go around smiling and fulfilling the food orders amongst the melee of people chatting away on an afternoon.
So there is Thums Up for the cola fans; Nimbu Paani for the roadie and of-course ginger chai for the everyone served in a typical glass like in the streets of Mumbai. Our table today had a good mix of boisterous meat eaters to the vegetarian food blogger so quite an experience.
The kheema pav; full of flavor and elegantly rustic that it immediately captured the attention of every one in the table while I bit into portions of a most authentic vada pao served complete with the dry garlic chutney, green chillies and sauce to dip. The prawn koliwada was also gobbled up by my meat eater colleagues with much of gusto. Then came our mains of al the 3 varieties of biriyani – chicken, mutton and the vegetarian variety. The Chicken Berry Brittania pays tribute to the Chicken Berry Pulao of café Brittania fame. Not too far behind was the mutton biriyani that found a lot of love on the table. As for me I enjoyed digging into my bowl of the vegetarian biriyani with a dollop of friend onions on top and it really went well with the cucumber raita that was served.
That being said is all that I have to write about today. Have I done justice to this article – hardly…..there is so much more to sample and experience so many square meters of the restaurant area to be explored and so many desserts to be sampled yet.
Dishoom is the sound effect of a typical Bollywood movie where the hero punches the villain who winces in pain. Out here though it was a pleasure punch of flavors that found its way right to your heart!
Dishoom – Kings Cross Located at a 5min walk from Kings Cross station and near to the St Pancras international station is one just past a myriad of food trucks is a unique eatery that scrapes right into the heart of the idiosyncrasies that make up Mumbai as a metro.