Dishoom Is Crossing the Atlantic With Mumbai-Inspired Food and Culture

For anyone who has ever stood patiently in a queue outside Dishoom on a rainy, chilly, or sunny London evening, the restaurant has always been more than the promise of its signature House Black Daal or perfectly flavoured Chicken Ruby. It is, in many ways, an act of coming together to immerse oneself in the brand’s exceptional storytelling multiverse which, at its heart, always boils down to the singular act of penning an affectionate, heartfelt missive to the culinary subcultures of Mumbai. And now, after more than two decades of simmering that tale in locations in and around London, Dishoom is finally ready to cross the Atlantic. 

Later this year, Dishoom will open its first outpost in New York City, a move that feels inevitable yet surprisingly unhurried. After all, Americans have been making pilgrimages to Dishoom’s London addresses for years, treating reservations as mandatory additions to their travel itineraries. Yet for co-founder Kavi Thakrar, the expansion always had to feel organic, and not something that they undertook for the sake of it. “Hospitality is the heart of what we do, with a strong belief in deepening without dilution,” he says, as we connect over Zoom from the group’s London headquarters. “Growth makes hospitality harder. When we opened shop two decades ago, we never thought about becoming the mammoth business we are today. Each restaurant we have tells a story about Bombay [now Mumbai] and the day we run out of stories to tell, we will probably not open another restaurant again!” 

Growing up in Britain, Thakrar often found that conversations around India were reduced to familiar stereotypes of curry houses, cricket, the Taj Mahal, Bollywood, and nostalgic remnants of the Raj. British curry houses occupied one end of the culinary spectrum, while Michelin-starred Indian fine dining occupied the other, creating a lacuna for something that spoke more honestly to the authenticity of everyday Indian life. “When we began toying with the idea of launching Dishoom, we were really thinking about why there isn’t something in the UK that represents Indian food and culture in a way that people from the subcontinent can really resonate with,” Thakrar recalls. Drawing inspiration from Mumbai’s disappearing Irani cafés—once democratic spaces where the city gathered over cups of chai and plates of eggs and kheema, regardless of background or social 80 standing—Thakrar with his sibling and co-founder Shamil launched Dishoom’s first outpost at Covent Garden in 2010. 

Kiera Knightley has famously queued up for a seat at the table, and families celebrating milestones like birthdays or anniversaries might often find themselves seated next to a table where an erstwhile prime minister of UK is breaking bread with his family. Whether you walk into their Canary Wharf outlet which pays homage to the Bombay Stock Exchange, or their King’s Cross outpost which mimics the dockyards of Mumbai, every Dishoom has a story for you to comfortably partake in with your meal. 

In 2025, the brand further expanded the scope of their offerings by launching their Dishoom Permit Room on Portobello Road in Notting Hill which was inspired by the permit rooms that mushroomed across Mumbai following a statewide alcohol prohibition. While the Permit Room comes with its own share of speakeasy-inspired cocktails and bespoke menu, it also has bed-and-breakfast lodging facilities with interiors full of art curated by LA-based gallerist Rajiv Menon. Two years ago, the Thakrar brothers took Dishoom to New York City to stage a breakfast-only pop-up at Pastis in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. Within minutes of them going live, the servers of Resy crashed across the country as over 20,000 people joined their waitlist, and within four minutes of the servers going up again, their entire event was sold out with people queuing up around the block from 6.30am in the morning. The Thakrar siblings were overwhelmed with the response, and knew that perhaps the time to move across the pond was indeed approaching. “For us, New York feels like a very natural home, hence I hope New Yorkers love what we’ve got planned for them. We want New Yorkers to walk in and say, ‘This is a New Yorker’s restaurant.’,” he says. As for India? “Never say never,” Thakrar smiles when asked whether Dishoom might someday arrive on home soil. “New York is on the immediate horizon; India isn’t for the moment, but who knows what the future holds.”