Lately I’ve been noticing how a restaurant smells when you first walk in. At Park Chinois, it’s overwhelmingly of truffles; at Cédric Grolet at The Berkeley, it’s rich with butter; but at Pahli Hill, a smart Indian outfit in London’s Fitzrovia, it’s hard to describe.
To be sure, an intoxicating blend of Indian spices lingers in the air. But it’s more than just a scent – it’s an inviting feeling, like someone wrapping a woollen shawl around you when you’ve just come in from the rain. Or maybe that’s just the warm glow cast from the open kitchen, highlighting colours in the eclectic artwork as it sweeps across the indigo blue walls of the dining room. I suppose you could call the overall effect transportative, taking you from dreary London to the restaurant’s roots in the tropics.
