The first Dishoom restaurant and bar to launch outside of London will begin its soft opening in Edinburgh today.

Open to the public – no need to book – Dishoom is offering a 50% discount on all food and drink in the dining room until Sunday 4th December*.

Housed in the building which was once the warehouse for Forsyth’s Department store, the St Andrew Square restaurant takes its inspiration from the Irani cafés that were once an integral part of Bombay life.

Founded by Zoroastrian immigrants from Iran, these informal cafés were open to all – no matter what caste, class or creed.

There were almost four hundred cafés at their peak in the 1960s. Now, fewer than thirty remain.

Multi-cultural character

Dishoom’s founders have close links to Bombay, now Mumbai, and the Dishoom restaurants are designed to reflect the city’s multicultural character rather than the usual Raj/cricket/Taj Mahal tropes used by many Indian/Bangladeshi restaurants in the UK.

The decor of the Edinburgh Dishoom also references the life of the Scot Patrick Geddes.

Among many other things, Geddes was a town planning pioneer. He was instrumental in preserving Edinburgh’s Old Town and also influenced the development of Bombay.

Pictures of Geddes and old family pics of Dishoom’s founders cover the restaurant’s walls. While many restaurants buy their decor by the yard, every single one of the 180 pictures and pieces of art in the Edinburgh Dishoom has been curated.

You can read much more about the man here.

Breakfast chai to late night cocktails

Open from breakfast through to late evening, the first floor, 140 cover dining room is designed to be a casual drop-in operation; although tables can be booked for groups of six or more in the evenings.

It’s a flexible, laidback kind of place. Guests are welcome to swing by for a cup of chai or settle in for a leisurely evening meal.

A take on the menus of the original Irani cafés, the choice of dishes represents India’s vast regional and cultural variations.

From Bombay’s pau bhaji veggie buns to Punjabi chickpea curries via Irani biryanis, the menu bears little resemblance to those found in more trad Anglo-Indian restaurants.

Below the dining room is a ground floor bar seating around 70. Centred around an open kitchen, it is lively bustling space.

Below this is a basement bar called The Permit Room, so named because, technically, you still need an official permit to drink in Mumbai.

Open from 5pm to 3am, it’s a cocktail-led bar with DJs playing ambient tracks.

Great mocktails

The Bombay-inspired cocktails are fantastic and – I never thought I would write these words – so are the mocktails.

*We’ve been asked to point out that the point of the soft opening – and the hefty discount – is to give staff a chance to bed in.

They are expecting everything to run smoothly but, if there are hiccups, it would be churlish to start stamping your feet.

Just saying.