The FDC Community’s favourite places to eat and drink in Bangalore in 2024

Favourite restaurants 

I had a suspicion that a community of people who actually love food, who spend money on food, who eat out regularly across price points and cuisines, would end up with better choices than most actual awards. Most awards either have influencers and critics who only eat where they are invited or have their own agendas, or they have socialite type voters who don’t know the first thing about food, or they are paid awards! 

Favourite budget restaurants 

We voted as a community across 3 categories… restaurants, budget restaurants and watering holes. First we got everyone to nominate their top 20 on each category. Then we shortlisted the top 20 vote getters and asked people to pick their top 5 in order with a points system (details at the end). 

Only one of the categories had a winner I voted for and the nominees are missing one of my Top 5 restaurants. But I am still really happy with the choices the voters made and I’m glad Malancha and I put this together. 

This feels like this is the first list in Bangalore that’s representative of what people actually eat and love. A combination of places that have innovated and changed Bangalore’s food scene and places that are legendary and have stood the rest of time. A balance of creativity and comfort. A sense of zeitgeist and of permanence. 

It just feels fair and balanced and instinctively, it feels right!

Favourite watering holes 

A few observations:

• Nagarjuna gets a lot of hate. But the numbers don’t lie. It’s part of the city’s DNA. What’s insane is how Malgudi Mylari Mane almost beat it in the budget restaurant category despite being so new. And how it’s ahead of institutions like CTR, MTR, Shivaji and more. What Steven and gang have done is spectacular.
• 6 dosa joints in the top 13 budget restaurants. This city is addicted to dosas.
• 4 Andhra joints. 2 Kerala cuisine restaurants. 2 Mangalorean places. All in the top 20 budget restaurants. This city also loves its regional non veg food. 
• When you look at the non-budget restaurants, none of the top 6 use a PR person or publicist. Navu, 13th floor/Ebony, FarmLore, Bengalooru Oota Company, Naru and Kopitiam Lah. All are founder/promoter/chef led places that have been listed by the love of customers and the personal involvement of the people behind it.
• It makes me wonder if (at least in Bangalore) an over dependence on PR people is counter productive. Bastian which had one of the biggest PR campaigns I’ve ever seen ended up without a single nomination. Idyll brought influencers down from across India.. zero nominations. Which means not a single person said they were in their top 20 restaurants in the city! Rameshwaram didn’t get nominated in the budget restaurants. Even Lupa with its slick PR machinery only ended up at number 18. The bar winner, Spirit Forward has also never had a PR agency. 
• This isn’t to say that PR doesn’t work. But in Bangalore what matters are two things. A personal touch and a sense of community/ownership. Build goodwill and community as a founder and this city will love you and support you. Do this overhyped, inauthentic, fake shit and this city will teach you a lesson. 
• The success of 13th Floor/Ebony, Toit, Windmills on this list is proof of the power of goodwill. Once this city embraces you, once you become an institution, the city’s foodies love you their entire lives.
• I’ve often said that Bangalore’s restaurant scene has transformed in the last few years. 6 of the top 8 opened during or after Covid. Same with 6 of the top 10 drinking joints (plus 2 revamps). This city rewards the brave and the new if it’s done well.
• The top fourteen restaurants all serve different cuisines, a sign of how open minded this city is to new flavours. 
• That being said, 9 of the top 20 are Asian restaurants. Not something I would have expected! 
• There isn’t a single high quality North Indian restaurant in the city outside of the 5 stars. It’s kind of mind blowing that 20 years after Samarkand and Sahib Singh Sultan, we don’t have a successor. 
• 5 of the top 12 watering holes are focused on cocktails, 1 on wine. 4 on regular drinks. Only 2 on beer. Yes this is the city of beer. But Bangalore’s drinking culture is changing rapidly. 

That’s it for now guys. Our snapshot of eating and drinking in Bangalore in 2024 as per the FDC community.

Thank you Malancha for stepping up and making my random idea a reality! 

And thanks to everyone who voted and to everyone who is a part of this community! 

Anirban Blah

Methodology:

Phase 1: Nominations 

A Google form asked Forkers to enter their favourite establishments, in no order, under three categories: up to 10 each under Budget and Watering Holes and up to 20 under Regular. Places were ranked by the number of times each was chosen; duplicate entries in the same category were counted as a single entry.

The top 20 from each category progressed to the Voting phase. 

Phase 2: Voting 

A fresh form listed the top 20 places in alphabetical order for each category. Forkers were invited to select their top 5, this time in order of preference, with explicit instructions to not select the same place twice under the same category.

The votes were converted to scores using a linear scale with the first pick getting 5 points and the 5th pick getting 1 point. 

The scores for each place were summed and ranked to arrive at the final leaderboard. 

Other considerations

- Both forms collected submitter names and phone numbers. 

- Submitters were not given access to the live results after nominating or voting.

- 101 votes were received. One was excluded due to duplicate selections, leaving 100 votes to be tallied.

- The form owner submitted nominations but did not vote because he had access to the live leaderboard.

- I did vote. But I submitted the first vote so it wasn’t clouded by the live voting 

- We will keep records of all votes for a few months at least