It is a busy day at the café, bearers flit between tables balancing trays of tea cups and saucers of bun-maska . Waiters, meanwhile, scribble orders in a jiffy — poro , akuri , French toast, keema pav , rasta sandwich, mawa cake. The place is abuzz with a steady drone of guests; the air is fragrant with the aroma of fresh food. This scene might look like it is straight out of an Irani café in South Mumbai, except it is happening in the heart of Punjabi Delhi.
The situation is similar at Irani Café, Pune, Café Regal, Jamshedpur, The Bawa, Pune, and Kayani & Co, Mumbai. On the verge of extinction until a few years ago, the Irani café culture is making a comeback, and its effect can be seen everywhere. The only difference? In the new scheme of things, the Irani café culture comes together with Parsi food traditions to create an electric combination, which is winning over patrons across demographics. Looking at their popularity, it is hard to tell that these cafés and their recipes were dying until just a few years ago.
“The credit for revival of the Irani café culture and Parsi food goes entirely to SodaBottleOpenerWala; they came at a time when the Irani cafés were dying but the interest in regional cuisines was growing,” Vernika Awal, an award-winning food blogger and journalist from Mumbai, tells us over the phone. “Thanks to them, the cafés have had a new lease of life,” she goes on to add.
Movers and shakers
Since opening its first outlet in Gurugram, a few years ago, SodaBottleOpenerWala continues to lead the way for smaller Parsi and Irani establishments around the country. The place not only helped people open up to quirky décor, aluminium plates, and cutting chai glasses, but also to experimenting with new flavours, textures and combinations. “At SodaBottleOpenerWala, we pay a tribute to the dying legacy of a Bombay Irani café, bringing with it typical Parsi cuisine and some Irani specialities too,” chef and manager Anahita Dhondy, who manages the Gurugram, Delhi, and Bengaluru outlets, tells us. “The food we serve is a mix of recipes from Iran, Persia, Goa and Mumbai,” she adds.
“Parsis are known for eating meat for breakfast. The practice began with having the leftover meat dishes with pav in the morning and soon became a tradition. Then there are the eggs, which no Parsi can do without.”
“We have our own bakery, so we can ensure the pav , cakes, kharis , and buns that accompany our food are completely authentic,” informs Dhondy.
Authenticity is at the heart of the new wave of Irani cafés across cities. Most of them are set up like a typical Irani café in Mumbai with checkered floors, large mirrors, fuss-free furniture, and high ceilings. “Functionality was the only thing on the café owner’s mind back then. The mirrors were put up to keep an eye on the staff and customers, the floor was made of sturdy kota and kadappa stone, so that it did not get damaged easily, high ceilings ensured the place stayed cool. They were just being economical and practical,” Mokhtar Yaveri, who runs Irani Café in Pune, explains the logic behind the design. “Today, of course, it is more about décor,” he adds.
Mokhtar comes from an Irani family and has brought back not only the authentic vibe to his café, but also the real Irani food. So you have brun maska , keema pav , bun maska , and the special Irani chai , whose recipe remains a family secret. “There is a sense of nostalgia attached to Irani cafés, especially in Mumbai and Pune. A majority of my customers are senior citizens, who used to frequent Irani cafés as kids, and are elated to find a place like this in an upmarket neighbourhood; of course, there are youngsters too, fascinated by the ambience and food,” adds Mokhtar.
Jamshedpur calling
Nostalgia is what brought Varun Gazder back to Jamshedpur to set up his café — Café Regal — in a hundred-year-old building. The town, home to a sizeable population of Parsis, never had the Irani café culture, but there was always an intimate circle of Parsi food aficionados, which had started to die. So Varun quit his job at Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, Mumbai, to set up Café Regal in an abandoned cinema hall in a Parsi bastion. “Whenever I ate Parsi food outside of my home, I felt something was amiss. It did not have that aroma or flavour. So I decided to bring out my family recipes to my café,” he tells us.
Not only did Gazder clear up the second floor of a decrepit theatre to set up Café Regal (named after the cinema), but he also recreated the Parsi bhonu from his family recipe. The special Sunday lunch takes between four and five hours to prepare and remains very popular with the patrons — both Parsis and non-Parsis.
“I’ve been lucky because the people have really taken to the food here. We get youngsters and seniors in equal numbers and my Sunday lunch is completely booked by Friday evening,” says Gazder cheerfully. His vision is to slowly and steadily introduce more Irani and Parsi specialities, while maintaining the authenticity and quality of the place.
But not everyone seems to be happy with the trend. Some feel that the new-age adaptation of Irani cafés is taking away the authenticity of the recipes.
“They feel the mawa cake at the newer places is not as good as the ones at Kayani, or the akuri is too dry,” reveals Awal, who also hosts many Irani food-walks. “But for now, it is just great that we have an entire breed of young people working to revive a dying tradition.” We cannot help but agree.
