Indian Coffee House is a small and old restaurant on Church Street in Bangalore that I've been visiting for about two years now.
I fell in love with the restaurant the second I walked in, there's a vibe to the place that no other vicinity in Bangalore has. Starting from the smell of the restaurant to the furniture, I can say that it hasn't changed one bit in the last two years I've been visiting and that maybe it hasn't changed from even longer.
All kinds of people come here, some maybe work in the news paper agencies or are even students who go to colleges in the area, some just come and go, some are religiously regular, young, old, people well dressed with their hair neatly combed, people feeding food to each other, some just to read their daily news paper with some hot coffee and toast.
Indian coffee House is a feeling. I can honestly go alone, enjoy myself or even introduce the place to a friend who has never heard of the restaurant. Unless I don't order for the table, the waiters will politely/subtly ask us to leave if its a peak hour. Coming to the managers, there are two and they have been very nice and kind enough to let me take photographs in the restaurant a number of times. They even converse with me if I sit close to the counter, talk to me about why I take so many photos every time I came there or they ask me about what I do or what my parents do, small talk. They even thought I worked close by because I was a regular, they have even seen so many of my friends I bring along that probably my parents also don't know about.
The workers in the kitchen and in the service area have spent their entire lives working for the restaurant, forty maybe even fifty years of service, and they always give me the menu with a smile, though they know what I'm going to order for the table: A cold coffee and an omelette. The thing about the cold coffee is that its just cold milk with some coffee and to be honest its quite strong and filling, the omelette is just any other omelette, something anyone can easily make at home. I still remember this time when they used to serve the cold coffee with a thin blue straw, same straw I used to drink tender coconut when I was really young, took me back so many years. I haven't been going to Indian coffee house for too long to say its nostalgic, but it really is.
The menu is not extraordinary, its minimal and its something you'd get in any other "darshini or upahar". There's something to the place, be it the people, food or the ambience, it takes you back to something in your life, people fall in love when they go here, they don't complain or judge the place, they enjoy themselves and I do mean it when I said 'it feels like home', because if this is not what home feels like, I dont know what is.
The humid air from the kitchen, the smell, the painted blue and pink walls with mirrors on both sides, the furniture, the people that both visit and work add to this vibe. Indian Coffee House is an acquired taste and this is a place to go to if you are a sucker for old school or Indian vintage.
This place is more than just breakfast, they have meals too.
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