Bulbul restaurant Blackfriars opens with regional India menu

Bulbul restaurant Blackfriars has opened at 25 Tudor Street, the first restaurant outside Goa from Rohan D'Souza and Twinkle Keswani, the pair behind Pisco by the Beach.

The building, a former 130-year-old printing press, has been converted into a dining room with brushed velvet sofas, brass napkin holders and an indoor water fountain, a deliberate step up from the exposed-brick look common to recent Indian openings in London.

D'Souza, who began his career in London working with Marco Pierre White, built the menu around what the team calls a micro-regional approach, developed after travelling across India and spending time in home kitchens and local markets.

The dishes we serve rarely travel beyond the region where they come from.

Dishes that rarely travel

Rather than a pan-Indian greatest-hits menu, Bulbul focuses on recipes and techniques the founders say rarely appear outside their region of origin, sourced directly from cooks rather than from existing restaurant repertoires.

The name Bulbul refers to a songbird found across India, chosen, the founders said, to reflect the range of regional voices the menu tries to represent rather than a single national cuisine.

The opening follows months of anticipation after the restaurant was first announced in the spring, with trade press tracking the project as a test of whether London diners will pay a premium for research-driven regional cooking over familiar curry-house staples.

A crowded year for Indian openings

Bulbul lands in a City fringe location increasingly popular with large-format restaurants, not far from Juno, the new Italian restaurant opening at Olympia, as operators chase footfall from workers and visitors around Blackfriars and the wider City.

Bulbul adds to a run of ambitious Indian restaurant openings in London this year, as operators move away from set-menu formality towards more personal, chef-led concepts with higher price points.

The founders have not disclosed the investment behind the fit-out, though the scale of the interior points to a longer-term bet on the location rather than a short pop-up run. Early reviews have focused as much on the room itself as on the food, a sign the founders' spending on design is already shaping how the restaurant is being talked about.