The best place to eat in the UK is an Indian restaurant chain, according to Yelp

John Carey

The best restaurant in the UK isn't an extravagant Michelin-starred restaurant, but an affordable Bombay-inspired café chain, according to British users on Yelp.

Dishoom serves up delicious Indian cuisine out of four London-based restaurants, each designed to emulate the style of 20th-century Irani cafés, which were opened by Zoroastrian immigrants from Iran who settled in Bombay (now Mumbai).

Ambience is as much a part of the dining experience as the food at Dishoom, with its restaurants furnished with dark wooden tables, rickety Bentwood chairs, tiled floors, and humming ceiling fans.

John Carey

Origins

Dishoom founders and cousins Shamil and Kavi Thakrar opened the first Dishoom restaurant in Covent Garden in 2010, along with two other founders, Adarsh and Amar Radia.

Shamil and Kavi grew up in the UK but spent much of their childhood in Mumbai, where they lamented the loss of Irani cafés. Once bustling meeting places where everyone from taxi-drivers to businessmen could eat together, Irani cafés are now a dying industry with few remaining today.

"Irani cafés were a vehicle for Muslims, Hindus, and Christians to eat at the table together," Shamil told You Can Now magazine in January 2016. "It changed the way Bombay was."

Passionate about paying homage to this important part of Mumbai's heritage and culture, Shamil and Kavi combined their experience in business and management to start Dishoom.

Six years later, the restaurant has four locations: Covent Garden, Shoreditch, King's Cross (the largest outpost, housed inside a 19th-century railway shed on Granary Square), and the newest Dishoom on Carnaby's Kingly Street.

John Carey

So what should you get at Dishoom?

For breakfast, Yelp users raved about the bacon naan roll, which one user called a "tasty treat" that goes down nicely with a cup of spicy house chai.

Diners choosing from the all-day menu opt for the "chicken ruby," a chicken curry with a "makhani" sauce, and the "house black daal," a lentil-based dish that's popular with vegetarians.

On the side, order a serving of crispy "okra fries" or "gunpowder potatoes" — potatoes with their skin left on that are smoke-grilled and broken up, mixed with butter, herbs, and seeds.

Finally, don't forget the "cheese naan," with melted cheddar cheese oozing on the inside, for mopping up whatever's left on your plate.

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