Kensal Prize

Under the benevolent glassy gaze of a mounted boar’s head, Natasha Paulini talks spontaneous design with pub owner and resident magpie Riz Shaikh

Above: The reading room

When Riz Shaikh bought Paradise by way of Kensal Green in June last year, locals were up in arms that it would join the stream of corporate gastro revamps, all sleek surfaces and soulless ambience. Since then, however, the corner pub on Kilburn Lane has become a West London institution.

‘The moment I walked into this place I knew what I could do with it,’ says Riz, leaning back in his chair, glass of wine in hand. ‘I’m no interior designer, but it was important for me not to have one. I didn’t want some plastic, poncy pub with no soul. This pub oozed character already, I just saw behind the cracks.’

What Riz saw was a run-down former tavern; what he envisaged was a house straight from a Dickensian novel. ‘I wanted to create something natural; something like what it would have looked like two, three hundred years ago – a rambling country home of some crazy aristocrat. The quirk factor was really important for me. This place actually makes no sense as a pub: there’s no designated dance floor, bar, restaurant.’

We’re seated in the non-restaurant restaurant that’s drenched with light despite the pouring rain. ‘This room is my favourite,’ says Riz. Why? I ask. ‘Well... ’cause it is just like a dining room. I think the panelling brings this room together – I had it made to look like it had always been here.’ Clare Callan, Paradise’s marketing manager, looks up quickly, ‘What, it wasn’t?’ Riz just laughs.

What I’m keen to find out is just how Riz woke the ‘sleeping giant’, as he calls it. ‘Subtly. It’s all a very organic process. I just wander around markets and secondhand shops, here and overseas, and pick up things I find beautiful. One of my very first shopping sprees was at Howie and Belle on Chamberlayne Road. I was walking past the window, and they hadn’t even opened for business yet. I went in and bought half the shop.’

A quick drop-in to store owners Abbie and Jo confirms the story, with those initial vintage objets d’art later joined by a heady brew of classic portraits and chaise lounges; stag horns and suspended birdcages. Chandeliers from the famous Parisian flea market La Marché illuminate cracked, gilt-edged mirrors and opulent wallpaper. Peering up the stairwell – ‘My favourite view,’ says Riz – you expect some bawdy courtesan to swing a stockinged leg over the banister and call down her wares. ‘Hey,’ says Riz, ‘don’t think it doesn’t happen.’

We wander through the maze of rooms and although each has its own separate identity, they all come together seamlessly; a mix of British nobility and French flamboyance. In the music room (seriously, by now I’m completely lost) I glance up to see a dozen tassled lampshades hanging from the ceiling. Riz exclaims, ‘Yeah, I was having a lampshade moment.’ From an interior designer, this would have sounded unbearably affected. In Riz’s mile-a-minute clipped vowels, it’s kind of charming.

As we move from that room to yet another, Riz goes up to a frame on the wall: the glass is smashed; the picture ripped out. ‘I guess it’s what you get for having beautiful things and drunken people,’ he says grimly, fingering the torn edges. Mostly, though, it’s testament to the fact that the things that adorn this pub’s walls are so coveted.

From the Moorish roof terrace (‘My mum did all the plants’) to the velvet-curtained private dining room, each bears the stamp of Riz’s irreverent, but stylish, eye. No surprise then that those same campaigning locals now crowd the bar. It really is a case of Paradise found.

Paradise by way of Kensal Green, 19 Kilburn Lane, W10 4AE; 020 8969 0098

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