Dishoom to take the Permit Room to Cambridge
Planning documents, which were approved by Cambridge City Council last month, show that the group has secured the former Strada site on Trinity Street.
It will mark Dishoom’s first permanent location in Cambridge, although the group does currently offer delivery across much of the city via a dark kitchen.
Dishoom opened its first Permit Room late last year in Brighton’s The Lanes.
The all-day bar and café concept is positioned as being a more drinks-led counterpoint to Dishoom’s core restaurant brand, and takes its influence from the ‘permit rooms, beer bars and drinking holes’ of 1960s and 1970s Bombay.
Permit Room’s cocktail menu includes 20 or so drinks with menu categories including Highballs, On the Rocks, Twisted Classics, and Frozen Lipsters.
Options include the Blushing Dawn Paloma with kumquat juice, chilli-infused tequila, spices, pink salt, lime-oil, sugar and mezcal; Mangosteen Daiquiri with white rum, mangosteen, fruit syrup and chamomile; and the Thums Up Sazerac featuring rye whiskey, Cognac and absinthe sweetened with a reduction of Indian cola Thums Up.
The menu, meanwhile, is smaller than that offered at Dishoom restaurants and more geared toward drinking food.
Dishes include masala whitebait; crispy spinach chaat; charred sweet potato with chilli-lime masala; and ragda pattice, a tangy curry of dried white peas, tamarind, tomato served with two fried lentil and potato patties.
Dishoom was founded by Shamil and Kavi Thakrar in Covent Garden in 2010 and now operates an estate of 10 restaurants under its core brand across London, Manchester, Edinburgh and Birmingham.
Development and expansion of the Permit Room concept is being led by Dishoom managing director Brian Trollip.
It is also understood that Dishoom is also eyeing a site in Oxford for a third Permit Room location, with the Oxford Mail reporting last month that the group had submitted a licensing application to Oxford City Council for the ground floor and lower ground floor of North Bailey House in New Inn Hall Street.
However, the application appears to have been subsequently withdrawn and the status of the site is currently unclear.
