Grace Dent reviews Dishoom

Have you been to a Dishoom before? I hadn’t. The Covent Garden one lies in close proximity to Stringfellows, which I always cross the road to avoid in fear of Peter Stringfellow appearing in a leopardskin posing pouch with speedboat-ruffled mullet, and mindmelding me into thinking that showing my boobs to businessmen is ‘empowering’. But a quick check with friends confirmed that all Dishooms in London have the same vibe, aiming to bring ‘a slice of cool Bombay living to London, inspired by the disappearing old cafés that were an important part of life in India’s commercial capital throughout the last century’.

Dishoom Shoreditch is a cavernous mishmash of Persian and Indian artefacts, purposefully shabby-chic tat and ‘family’ photos. It’s unclear whose family. It’s as if a Leon restaurant has gone on a Gap Year. ‘Do you think they know I’m reviewing?’ I muttered to my friend Rachel as we swept into a slightly deserted restaurant on a Thursday at 1pm. ‘No,’ she said, ‘or we wouldn’t be sat in the cold in a corridor.’

The best place to sit is on the large raised section of lovely big yellow banquettes near the windows. (Don’t expect a view — it’s beside a traffic jam — just concentrate on the quirky pictures of an anonymous Bombay family party in full swing.) Lots of the tables for two are in a thoroughfare and one can’t reserve for two people anyway, which was perhaps why there was no one taking clients there for a cheap, quirky lunch. I do sympathise with this no-booking policy, it must be tremendously arduous for the staff to scrawl ‘reserved’ on a napkin and chuck it on a table. We politely demanded a lovely yellow banquette, and the waitress, mistaking me for Hagrid from Harry Potter in my hungover state, complied.

I ordered a mango and fennel seed lassi, which was really damn excellent. In fact, much better than anything I’ve had along Brick Lane and dare I say it, for fear of being marauded by foodies, lovelier than the mango ones at Tayyabs on Fieldgate Street, which I often wake in the night replaying. In truth, all of the dishes I tried at Dishoom were satisfying and interesting, albeit not entirely piping hot or massively authentic. Dishoom’s calamari with a grainy crunchy crumb is excellent, meanwhile the vadu pau — ‘Bombay’s version of a chip butty’: spiced blobs of carbs in a bun — could have done with two minutes longer in the Dishoom family fryer.

I had some house black dahl, gorgeous, comforting, unctuous lentils, with a side of slaw bejewelled with pomegranate seeds, as almost all dishes have to be these days. My wrists are sore with banging a pomegranate with a wooden spoon in culinary glee. The murgh malai — thigh meat steeped in garlic and ginger — was subtle but moreish. It actually had the exact taste of my father’s Boxing Day turkey curry from the 1980s and as most of those ingredients were bought in pots from the local Co-op, I’m wondering whether Dishoom would satisfy more demanding palates. The rice was 100 per cent rice — don’t make me explain rice. Same, too, for the largely pedestrian bread section.

The service is exactly as if hipsters ran a Harvester. They have a selection of standard phrases to say to you and then they slump in corners gossiping about who’s had a neck tattoo. To sum up: I will go back to Dishoom if someone else really wants to go and I haven’t got any better suggestions, as it’s absolutely fine. Have a ruby and a lassi. The earth won’t move at lunchtime during party season, but then you really don’t want it to.