Best Irani cafés in Mumbai, ranked
Marble-topped tables and bentwood chairs in an old Irani cafe
From around 350 cafés a century ago to fewer than 30 today, here are the ones worth your morning, with chai at ₹25 and bun maska at ₹45.
What an Irani café is, and why they are disappearing
Zoroastrian migrants from Iran opened corner cafés across Bombay from the late nineteenth century, taking the awkward junction plots nobody else wanted. The template hardened into something instantly recognisable: high ceilings, bentwood chairs, marble-topped tables, mirrored walls, glass jars of butter biscuits, and a list of house rules on the wall. Estimates put the number at around 350 in their heyday. Today, depending on who is counting, fewer than 30 survive. Rents, redevelopment and heirs who do not want the eighteen-hour day did the damage, not a lack of customers.
What you get for ₹100 is the best-value cultural experience in Mumbai. Irani chai, brewed dark and sweet, runs ₹25 to ₹40. Bun maska, a soft bun split and buttered thickly, is ₹40 to ₹70. Add brun maska, harder crusted, or a mawa cake at around ₹40. Most of these places open early, close for a mid-afternoon lull and shut earlier than you expect. Go in the morning, sit with a newspaper, and accept that this is not somewhere you occupy a table for two hours.
1. Britannia and Co, Ballard Estate
The most famous of them, in the Edwardian grid of Ballard Estate near Ballard Pier, and the one that requires the most planning. It is a lunch operation only, usually closed in the evenings and on Sundays, so build your day around it. The order is berry pulao, a mound of spiced rice with meat and a scatter of tart Iranian zereshk berries, historically shipped from Iran, at roughly ₹550 to ₹750 depending on whether you take chicken, mutton or vegetarian. It is genuinely unlike anything else in the city.
Expect a wait of 20 to 40 minutes at 1pm on a weekday, because the whole of Fort's office population knows about it. The room, with its high ceiling, portraits and worn tiles, does most of the work. Add a caramel custard at around ₹200 and skip the rest of the menu, which is fine rather than special. Confirm the day's opening hours before you set out, since timings have shifted more than once. If you only do one Irani meal in Mumbai, do this one, and do it hungry.
2. Kyani and Co, Marine Lines
Opened in 1904 near Metro Junction and Marine Lines station, Kyani is the platonic Irani café interior: pale green walls, wooden staircase, a glass counter of mawa cakes and khari biscuits, and a first floor that feels like a stage set. Bun maska with chai comes to about ₹90; the mawa cake at around ₹40 is the best-known item and sells out by late morning. The kheema pav and akuri, spiced scrambled eggs, are the things to order if you are eating properly rather than snacking.
This is the easiest one to reach, minutes on foot from Marine Lines station on the Western Line and a short walk from Kala Ghoda and the Bombay High Court. Go before 10am on a weekday and you will get an upstairs table and unhurried service; go at 1pm and it is a scrum. It is also a good first stop on a Fort walking morning: Kyani, then the Asiatic Society steps, then the Victorian Gothic and Art Deco ensemble along the Oval Maidan, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site.
3. B Merwan and Co, Grant Road
Directly opposite Grant Road station, this is the one for people who like getting up early. The mawa cakes come out of the oven in batches from around 7am and are typically gone by mid-morning, still warm, dense with reduced milk and cardamom, at roughly ₹40 each. The café has closed and reopened over the years, and its survival is a small miracle of Mumbai. The room is plainer than Kyani, with fluorescent light and formica, and the crowd is commuters rather than tourists.
Pair a mawa cake with a cutting chai and a plate of khari, and you have spent under ₹120. Grant Road is not a beautiful area, but it is five minutes from the Bhuleshwar and Girgaon lanes and a short taxi from Chowpatty, which makes for an excellent early morning circuit: cake at 7.30am, then the flower and utensil markets, then the sea at Chowpatty before the heat. Timings are early and the shutters go down without ceremony, so do not plan this as a brunch.
4 to 7: Yazdani, Ideal Corner, Jimmy Boy and Koolar
Yazdani Bakery, tucked into a lane behind Horniman Circle in Fort, is a working bakery with wooden benches and an ancient oven, and it makes the best brun maska in the city, hard-crusted and served with a slab of butter, at around ₹50 with chai. Ideal Corner, on a Fort side street, is a Parsi lunch counter rather than a café: sali boti, patra ni machhi and dhansak on rotation by weekday, most mains ₹350 to ₹550, with a daily menu chalked up and a firm no-lingering ethic.
Jimmy Boy near Horniman Circle serves the Parsi wedding menu, the lagan nu bhonu, and does a proper mutton dhansak in the ₹450 to ₹600 range; it is the most restaurant-like of this group and the easiest for a business lunch. Koolar and Co in Matunga East is the last real Irani café in the eastern-central suburbs, with a bun maska and chai combination under ₹80 and a location that pairs perfectly with the South Indian breakfast institutions of Matunga, ten minutes away, for filter coffee at around ₹40.
Timing, etiquette and what to skip
These are not cafés in the third-wave sense. Tables are shared, service is fast, and the house rules on the wall about not sitting long, not combing hair and not fighting are only half a joke. Many take cash, though UPI is now widespread. Most open around 7am, get quiet by 3pm and close in the early evening; several close entirely on Sundays. Verify the day and hours before travelling across town, because a wasted taxi ride in Mumbai traffic costs more than the meal. Photographs are usually tolerated; ask first upstairs.
What to skip: the new revivalist cafés with reproduction bentwood chairs, chai priced at ₹250 and a menu of deconstructed bun maska, which have opened in Bandra, Lower Parel and BKC. They are perfectly pleasant restaurants and they are not this. Also skip lunchtime at Britannia if you have a 3pm meeting, because the queue is real. If you have one morning in the city, my order is simple: mawa cake at Grant Road at 7.30am, brun maska in Fort at 9.30am, then the Kala Ghoda galleries before the heat.
Before you book
What people ask before booking Fort.
Irani chai at ₹25 to ₹40 with bun maska at ₹40 to ₹70 is the core order. Add a mawa cake at around ₹40, brun maska if you like a hard crust, and kheema pav or akuri for a full breakfast. For a Parsi lunch, order berry pulao or mutton dhansak.
Most open between 6.30am and 8am and are at their best before 10am, when the mawa cakes are fresh and tables are free. Many quieten by mid-afternoon and shut early evening, and several close on Sundays. Britannia and Co operates as a lunch venue only. Confirm hours before travelling across the city.
Partly. Chai, bun maska, brun maska, mawa cake, khari biscuits and akuri suit vegetarians, and Britannia serves a vegetarian berry pulao. The Parsi lunch places are heavily meat-based, with mutton and chicken dominating. Matunga, ten minutes from Koolar, is the place to go for a full vegetarian breakfast.
