Bandra Born is a labour a love.. and the culmination of a dream!

 

My friendship with Gresham Fernandes goes back to when I started my first company in 2009. In the absence of a proper office, I effectively worked out of Saltwater Cafe. There I befriended Gresham who not only fed me everyday but opened my eyes to how food creates community through the events they organised (like the legendary Swine Dine). Gresham and Riyaaz then opened St. Jude’s Project, a pop up community table for 10 in an abandoned bakery where Gresham and Manoj and the team would cook stunningly creative and complex meals, none greater than the “Tokyo Takeover” meal that they cooked after Gresham returned from a Tokyo holiday and decided to cook a meal inspired by his travels. 

For most of us who ate there, St. Jude’s was the best meal in the country in the years it existed. It was strange because I would always say that Gresham was one of India’s 3 best chefs along with Manish and Prateek but he was known as the guy at Saltwater Cafe! 

That was when I first heard Gresham and Riyaaz talk about Bandra Born… almost eight years ago. It felt like the idea already existed in their minds as a fully formed entity. To take all of Gresham’s mad genius, his technical mastery, his creativity and create a more casual space that paid tribute to his Bandra and East Indian roots. Of course life intervened including a global pandemic and the turbo charged growth of Impressario but Riyaaz and Gresham stayed to their original vision and now Bandra Born has finally emerged from where Saltwater Cafe used to be. 

This is clean, unfussy cooking that is deceptively sophisticated. People who know me know that I have a soft spot for clean, creative, casual, delicious food (like Navu and Plats) and Bandra Born epitomises that style more than any other restaurant in Mumbai. 

While Gresham is and has always been a wizard with meat, it’s the vegetarian dishes that really showcase what he brings to the table. The beet dish described as beets, seasonal greens and crispy chilli oil on the menu is so tasty that I was practically licking that oil off my plate. Similarly his cabbage roast was one of the rare dishes that would lead me to pick a vegetable over a beef steak. 

But my favourite dish was a meat dish. And it wasn’t the roast bone marrow with chilli cheese toast that has become an absolute sensation. It was the duck chawal, a stunningly original dish, like a duck khichdi with roasted onion and green peas that felt like the fullest expression of Gresham’s style… casual, familiar, comforting but the work of an absolute master. 

This is a lovely restaurant that plays on memory, nostalgia and identity. Showcasing the history of a community, a culture, a certain place and time, it feels deeply personal and a labour of love, not just a regular restaurant. It is a place that deserves to be celebrated and supported by the city’s food community. 

I ate:

• Beets’ Meat: beets smith, seasonal greens, crispy chilli oil 
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  Like fugias, but not: cheese, thyme and garlic 
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  Mushroom tart with porcini chutney 
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  Blackened leeks: burnt hazelnut and orange romesco, pickled coriander, seasoned pumpkin seeds 
• East Indian crab curry dip: crab Khuddi with croissant pao
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  Kamina carpaccio: tenderloin, truffled ponzu, salli potatoes 
• King cabbage: overnight roasted cabbage finished with brown butter served in its own jus 
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  Pork belly, carrot glaze, ginger jam
• Marrow chilli cheese toast with roasted bone marrow, cheese, habanero 
• Duck chawal: Bandra duck rice, roasted onion, green peas 

Desserts:

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  Venus jam cake with mixed berry sorbet 
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  Caramel custard with spiced glaze