Duda Diner brings Malaysian cooking to a Paddington hotel

Duda Diner, the Malaysian family-style restaurant run by Hakeem and Zura Ahmad, opens a residency inside The Pilgrm hotel in Paddington on 17 September, its biggest platform yet after an eight-month pop-up in Nunhead.

The residency runs to 31 December and closes out The Pilgrm's Incubator Kitchen Series, a year-long programme that has handed its ground-floor kitchen to four guest chefs in rotation rather than running a single in-house restaurant.

Duda Diner built its following at Goodcup, a coffee shop in Nunhead that let the Ahmads cook Malaysian dinners after hours. It follows a wider pattern in the capital, where Bon Bao's move from pop-up to a permanent Soho counter showed how far an informal residency can travel with the right following. The Ahmads' own menu draws on roadside stalls, late-night suppers, wedding feasts and market breakfasts from across Malaysia, filtered through their years of building a life and a kitchen in London.

Four kitchens took turns in one dining room this year, and the last one is staying for the whole winter.

A seasonal menu of shared plates

The Paddington menu is built for sharing and will change with the seasons. Early dishes include ikan bakar, a whole grilled seabream glazed with laksa beurre blanc and XO chilli and finished with pickled tuhau, a wild ginger native to Borneo. Kerabu salads pair bitter leaves with a ginger-lime dressing and candied nuts, while tempoyak oyster brings fermented durian to the raw bar, a combination that divides opinion in Malaysia as much as it will in Paddington.

A house burger anchors the menu for guests who want something more familiar: two beef patties, cheese, a fried egg and a Sarawak peppercorn chilli sauce standing in for ketchup.

The last of four hotel residencies

Guest-chef residencies let a small hotel test different cooking without committing to a single restaurant brand, and The Pilgrm has used the model to bring in four kitchens across 2026 before deciding what, if anything, becomes permanent. Duda Diner's stint is the longest test yet, running through the winter rather than a single season.

Whether the residency becomes the concept's own second permanent site, after Nunhead, depends on how the next three and a half months go.