Romy Gill Is Returning to Restaurant Kitchens After Six Years
Romy Gill at The Pem brings Punjab, Bengal, Kerala, and Rajasthan into Conrad London St. James this autumn, testing whether hotel dining can hold regional Indian cooking without flattening it.
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Romy Gill MBE is returning to a permanent restaurant kitchen for the first time in six years. This autumn, The Pem at Conrad London St. James in Westminster reopens as Romy Gill at The Pem, trading the modern British brief that launched under Sally Abé in 2021 for regional Indian cooking. The useful question for diners is not whether a hotel room can serve Indian food. It is whether a Conrad dining room can hold Punjab, Bengal, Kerala, and Rajasthan as separate kitchens, without flattening them into one polished “Indian” menu.
Gill grew up in West Bengal, ran Romy’s Kitchen in Thornbury, Gloucestershire, until 2019, and spent the years after on books, television, travel, and guest kitchens, including earlier collaborations with Abé in The Pem Presents series. She holds an MBE for services to hospitality and has published three cookbooks: Zaika, On the Himalayan Trail, and India: Recipes from Home. The autumn menu, as the restaurant and trade coverage describe it, moves across rich curries, smoky grills, slow braises, sharing plates, and a tasting menu still being finalised.
A hotel room with a regional brief
Hotel restaurants often reward smoothness: one house style, a menu that travels well for international guests, flavors that do not force a diner to choose a region. Gill’s public brief cuts the other way. Punjab, Bengal, Kerala, and Rajasthan are not interchangeable heat levels. Mustard oil, coconut, and desert-spice kitchens ask different things of produce, fire, and timing. If The Pem keeps those distinctions on the plate, the Conrad room becomes a real test of whether luxury hotel dining can carry serious regional Indian cooking instead of a single brand of comfort.
Gill has talked about British produce cooked with Indian technique, and about authenticity as knowing a dish’s place and craft rather than freezing a recipe in time. She wants the room elegant without stiffness. Comfort food, for her, is still dal, roti, rice, sabzi, and achar; cheese on toast sits beside that as a hospitality-career memory. The room itself already carries a story: The Pem is named for Emily Wilding Davison, the suffragette whose family called her Pem. Abé left in March 2025 after leading an all-female senior team at launch. Hotel GM Bernadette Gilligan has said each chef chapter shifts the room, and that Gill takes it somewhere new.
What to watch when it opens
This is still an appointment and reopen story, not a review of a room already serving. Square Meal has pointed to a September 2026 target; confirm the exact date, hours, and menu before you book. Watch whether the card names regions clearly, whether sharing plates keep household logic, and whether the tasting menu treats Kerala and Rajasthan as different arguments rather than a greatest-hits reel. The address is Conrad London St. James, 22-28 Broadway, Westminster SW1H 0BH.