K and I are cafe people.
We love sitting at a cafe nursing our coffees. For K it has to be a cappuccino in a takeaway cup. For me it could be a cappuccino or a black coffee with milk on the side. Something good to munch with it on the side would be great. Thankfully Bandra has quite a few great cafes and our favourites would be Candies at Mc Ronnels, The Smokehouse Deli, The bagel Shop, Starbucks at Mount Mary and Gloria Jean’s at Pali Naka.
What makes it even more wonderful right now are the rains. It’s been raining heavily in Mumbai of late and depending on which side of the rains you are in, it can get quite romantic. In my last post I had written about a magical lunch in the rains at Gallops.
Continuing in the same vein, there are some lovely coffee experiences that we have discovered in the past few days. Cafes which have lovely windows to look out at the rains from while you sip your cup of coffee. Three of these are at Bandra itself and I thought I must share them with you in case you make it there.
One of the best places to enjoy the rains while having a steaming cup of coffee is the lounge on the 21st floor at the Taj Land’s End, Bandra. The view out of its windows is simply glorious. When it’s raining you can see the sea blend into the skies shrouded by the mist. You are taken to a wonderland far away from Mumbai and feel like you are one with nature.
You get good coffees in the lounge and a buttery curried chicken sandwich but the show stealers were the cookies that I requested for with the coffee. These were soft baked cookies stuffed with melted chocolate chips. Reminded me of Ben’s Cookies in London that I had so fallen in love with. K described them as ‘a baby’s bottom stuffed with chocolate.’
How much does this cost?
Now here’s the catch. The lounge is open only to the house guests on the special 21st floor of the Taj land’s End. We could go there as a friend who was staying there kindly invited us over to have coffee with her. She is a Taj Inner Circle member.
Another lovely place, more accessible to people, is Moshe’s at Hill Road.
We had not been to Moshe’s for a while and had never gone there for coffee. We dropped in this weekend on a whim as we are at Hill Road at around 7 pm.
Being a restaurant and not a cafe Moshe’s was fairly empty and we were able to get a window seat. Twilight had set in and it was raining outside. The streetlights shimmered through the green. The scene was out of a picture postcard.
We prefer having decafs in the evening and Moshe’s has a pretty good option in cappuccino and black. With this we had an amazingly well flavoured lemon rocket hummus with pita and lavash.
Two coffees and a snack cost about Rs 600 or so here.
Another option that we ‘discovered’ is Birdsong Cafe, the organic cafe, tucked away in Waroda Road in Bandra, which we visited after a while recently on a raining evening. We sat by the huge window, looked onto the yellow cottage outside and had a dreamy creamy thick dark chocolate made with organic chocolate and a lovely open faced Greek yogurt and aubergine sandwich on stubby whole wheat bread.
A few days later I took my mom in law to Birdsong. I found out that unlike in the evening, you don’t get a valet to park your car in the mornings there.
You can judge the quality of hot chocolate in a place by the breadth of the smile that follows on my mom in law’s face and the one at Birdsong got a pretty big smile of appreciation from her.
I had an egg white omelette, which tasted like regular eggs but were organic, and the chubby wholewheat bread that they make. The egg was well seasoned and tasty and served hot.
The cappuccino machine was not working so I had a pretty competent black coffee. I ordered a chocolate chip cookie on the side but shouldn’t have after the Taj one. It just didn’t measure up.
We didn’t get window seats this time but I realised that thanks to the two big windows that they have at Birdgsong you get a pretty nice view wherever you sit and this, when painted by the rain, takes you to an enchanted lane far far away from the hustle bustle of the adjacent Bazar Road.
Two coffees and a snack here will cost around 5 to 600 Rs and they have free wifi here.
Which is your favourite spot in the rains in Mumbai?
