Empire Empire

Indian Disco, Notting Hill: The Scene Empire Empire Is Playing To

All Saints Road has always had a particular sense of itself. The street in W11 carries decades of counterculture credibility, and restaurants that open here tend to absorb that energy or look foolish trying. Empire Empire, occupying number 16, does something more interesting: it imports a different cultural register entirely, one rooted in India's 1970s disco era, and makes it feel entirely at home on a London side street that has never needed much convincing to be cool.

Walk in and the visual logic is immediate: coloured tiled flooring, dark wood furnishings, oval-shaped pendant lighting, and white tablecloths. Vintage album covers of Indian disco performers line the whitewashed walls alongside artwork by Jorgensen Chowdhury and Rabin Mondal. There is a jukebox and a photo booth. The references are specific and committed, which is why they work. This is not Bollywood spectacle in the maximalist sense; it is more considered than that, closer to a well-curated record collection than a themed theme park.

The Gunpowder Lineage and What It Signals

London's Indian restaurant scene has always been broader than its reputation suggested. For decades, the city's go-to addresses for serious subcontinental cooking clustered around Mayfair, with Amaya, Benares, and Trishna each building reputations for refined, region-specific cooking. The Gunpowder group, founded by Harneet Baweja, arrived with a different proposition: smaller rooms, sharper flavours, and a menu that treated Indian snack culture as a serious culinary subject rather than a preamble to the main event. That model earned attention and, eventually, a following.

Empire Empire extends the group's reach into Notting Hill, where it joins a cluster of recent openings that have collectively repositioned the neighbourhood as a serious dining destination rather than just a weekend brunch corridor. The kitchen is led by chef Kyle Zachary, and the focus narrows to Punjab and Northwest India, a regional concentration that gives the menu genuine depth rather than the pan-subcontinental sprawl that dilutes many London Indian restaurants. Among the broader Indian dining options worth knowing in the capital, Ambassadors Clubhouse and Babur each take different regional approaches; Empire Empire's Punjab lens is a deliberate editorial choice, not a compromise.

What the Menu Is Actually Doing

Northwest Indian cooking at this level is less about novelty and more about precision. The region's culinary tradition is built on the tandoor and the charcoal grill, on spiced minced meat kebabs and tikkas that depend entirely on heat management and marinade timing. A kitchen that does this well does not need to innovate constantly; it needs to execute consistently, and consistency is exactly what a Michelin Bib Gourmand rewards.

The menu moves through nashta (snacks) and starters, kebabs and tikkas, biryanis and curries. Deep-fried Amritsari pakoras, applied to fish and prawns, are the kind of snack that illustrates how the region uses the fryer: not for crunch as an end in itself, but to seal and concentrate flavour. The charcoal grill delivers a bihari ribeye beef kebab with the tenderness that only comes from controlled heat and proper resting. Sag gosht carries the gamey depth that distinguishes a confident kitchen from a cautious one, and a bhindi dopiaza loaded with tomatoes and onion demonstrates that vegetable dishes are not an afterthought here.

The butter chicken is listed as a house speciality, which in this context means something: it is the dish against which the kitchen measures itself, the one that regulars order to calibrate a first visit. The King Prawns Kadhai Masala, cooked in a wok-like kadhai with tomatoes, onions, and whole spices, is the kind of preparation that exposes kitchen skill quickly, because the technique is visible in the result. Naan arrives fresh from the oven, and gulab jamun with ice cream closes the meal in a fashion that is direct and unambiguous about its intentions.

To drink, the list runs to cocktails, beers, and a concise natural wine selection. The combination suits the room's energy without overcomplicating the decision.

Where Empire Empire Sits in the London Indian Hierarchy

The Michelin Bib Gourmand, awarded in 2024, places the restaurant in a specific tier: cooking of notable quality at a price point that does not require special occasion budgeting. That distinction matters in London's Indian restaurant market, where the gap between a reliable neighbourhood curry house and a destination-level address has historically been large. The Bib Gourmand category was designed for exactly this middle register, and it functions here as a precise indicator of what to expect: serious cooking, unpretentious delivery, accessible pricing at the ££ level.

The comparison set is worth mapping clearly. Mayfair's Indian fine dining addresses, including Amaya and Benares, operate at ££££ and position themselves against European fine dining peers on service formality and wine programme depth. The Gunpowder group restaurants operate in a different register, where the cooking is the primary argument and the room supports rather than leads.

For those interested in how the contemporary Indian restaurant scene is developing across the UK and beyond, Opheem in Birmingham represents a different ambition at the Michelin-starred level, while Trèsind Studio in Dubai illustrates the international direction the cuisine is taking in premium formats. The restaurant's contribution to this picture is more local and more specific: a neighbourhood room doing regional Indian cooking with genuine conviction.

The Neighbourhood Context

Notting Hill's recent restaurant wave has brought serious cooking to streets that previously depended on reputation over substance. The restaurant is among the openings that have given the area a more credible dining identity beyond its postcode cachet. All Saints Road, in particular, has the kind of foot traffic and local loyalty that allows a restaurant to build a regular clientele quickly, which is essential for the biryani-and-kebab format, where the kitchen's confidence compounds with repetition.

The room's size and atmosphere reward mid-week visits when the jukebox and ambient energy are noticeable rather than overwhelming. Weekend evenings lean into the disco references more fully, and the photo booth gets used. Either context works; they are just different versions of the same experience.

Planning Your Visit