Sign up to IndyEat’s free newsletter for weekly recipes, foodie features and cookbook releases Get our food and drink newsletter for free Get our food and drink newsletter for free Until not long ago, diners seemed to have reached a consensus. Chains were out. Independents were in. The future belonged to neighbourhood bistros, family-run restaurants, chef-owner passion projects and hidden gems that somehow managed to be both fully booked and impossible to find. We celebrated local institutions, obscure cuisines and restaurants with stories. We wanted hand-rolled pasta in converted railway arches and waiters called Luca who knew a lot about fermentation. The villains were obvious. Corporate restaurant groups. Plastic menus. Homogeneous dining rooms. “Happy Birthday” was performed by staff with all the enthusiasm of hostages reading a ransom note. Places where the food arrived suspiciously quickly and every branch looked exactly the same. And yet, here we are. Dishoom now has 11 restaurants and four drink-led Permit Rooms across the UK, with more planned, lodgings being added and New York on the horizon. Flat Iron …