Why does everyone want a bite at this 12-seater restaurant in Mumbai?

If you looked up 'Food Trends 2024' at the start of the year, you would have ended up reading a lot about experiential fine dining. It's a style of eating out that takes the snobbery out of eating at a fine restaurant and focuses on flavour, complexity, and form.

Away from the world of Indian, local, and seasonal that the parent brand Hunger Inc is known to play (sometimes overuse), Papa’s makes us happily pucker, like the salty rim of a great margarita. While some of their previous ventures like Veronica’s, an upscale sandwich shop, impressed us with brekkie wraps and egg-ey affair, others like The Bombay Sweet Shop may have made us want to take home the nolen gur & coconut kheer kadam, and say “Why on earth?” for the kappi pak. But Papa’s is different.

The restaurant’s name honours Chef Floyd Cardoz, the celebrated late mentor of Chef Hussain Shahzad, the executive chef of the group, although the cuisine at Papa's reflects Chef Shahzad’s personal style. “Papa's celebrates all the rules I’ve learnt, followed, and broken in the kitchen. As a canvas for creativity, it’s an opportunity to push the boundaries of what we know as Indian fare and get people to eat outside the lines,” says Chef Shahzad.

In February, this experiential dining spot launched as Hunger Inc’s peak product, on the mezzanine floor above Veronica’s, in the form of a 12-seater dining space. The food here touches you like Lucky Ali’s "hmm"—it’s gentle, flows smoothly, and mainly doesn’t scream (for attention). In a world full of storytelling restaurants, this lab/playground/theme park/amusement park—call it what you want—delivers food that has an understanding of what it wants to stand for. And it’s not just Indian, local, and seasonal this time.

In between your 12-course meal, the staff provides you with ample entertainment. From impromptu magic tricks to banter with the suave restaurant manager, his knowledge-sharing and funnies are all a part of this production. Cold stones cool your drinks—odd, but you’d rather have these than those overused stamped ice cubes.

For food, there is a line-up of dishes (not what you think they are) such as wellington, potato chips, and rasam, with meat swaps like what the duck! instead of what the khuska!, bugs bunny (a rabbit dish, of course), and char siu pork modak.

 

 

But no amount of reading this piece will do justice to explain what pure joy it is to experience Chef Shahzad’s definitive menu. In between this meal, a palate cleanser of strawberries, stracciatella, and tomatoes born as a salad and transformed into a granita, defines my whole experience. It was conclusive; almost like Charlie coming of age in the movie The Perks of Being A Wallflower.

Just one thing though, I wish they didn’t make their tagline “eat outside the lines” and then give us colouring books to paint within those lines. Why should ‘Hussain’ have all the fun? 

Address: Papa’s at Veronica’s, Waroda Rd, Ranwar, Bandra West

Reservation: Tel: +91 77388 95597

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