The Kala Ghoda Rooms, Mumbai

We stepped in off a Colaba side lane thick with taxis and the smell of frying bhajia, and the city instantly hushed. The Kala Ghoda Rooms occupies a 1930s Deco building that the owners spent three years coaxing back to life, and it shows in the details: a porthole window over the stairwell, a cage lift that clanks like a Wong Kar-wai film, terrazzo underfoot in oxblood and cream. The lobby is barely a lobby, more a louche little sitting room with a record player and a bar cart, art books stacked on a marble table. A doorman in a linen jacket carried our bags up. South Mumbai, at its best, feels exactly like this.

The room

Our room kept faith with the building's bones. Original terrazzo had been polished back to a dull sheen; the joinery, all curved teak and chrome handles, was either restored or faithfully rebuilt. A low rattan armchair sat by a tall casement that opened onto the lane's tangle of cables and signage, which is more charming than it sounds. The bed was firm and dressed in crisp Frette-weight cotton, the lighting warm and properly dimmable, the minibar stocked with Mumbai craft tonics. A vintage Murphy radio actually worked. The bathroom paired green subway tile with a deep cast-iron tub. It is design with a memory, not a mood board.

This is what South Mumbai sounds like at two in the morning: a saxophone two floors down and a taxi somewhere, going nowhere fast.The Suite Edit

Service & food

The team is young, sharp and a little informal, more concierge-friends than butlers; ask them where to eat and you will end up somewhere excellent and unmarked. The ground-floor bar is the draw, a narrow room of brass and low light where a jazz trio plays Friday and Saturday and the bartender mixes a serious East India gimlet. Food is a tight all-day menu rather than a restaurant: bombil fry, a proper kheema pav, a bowl of prawn balchão that we ordered twice. Breakfast leans Parsi, all akuri and brun-maska. It is a kitchen that punches above a fourteen-room hotel, if occasionally slow when the bar is full.

The verdict

This is for design-literate travellers who want to be in the thick of art-district Mumbai, gallery-hopping by day and propping up the bar by night, and who read a restored Deco building as a feature rather than a compromise. Aesthetes and night owls will be in heaven. The honest caveat: this is central Colaba, which means street noise climbs the casements until late, parking is a fantasy and the lane outside is gloriously chaotic. If you need silence and a porte-cochère, go north to the sea-facing towers. We would rather be here.