Heading to a café or a restaurant seems to be the most preferred spot for today’s millennials whether you want to hang out with your friends, go out on a date, catch up with work colleagues or are just bored. While the cafe culture is blooming in India, there are well-designed and unique-themed cafes, especially in the metro cities. Rather than food, their decor is what attracts people to these places. Let’s take a look at some of these truly innovative and unusual food eateries that can be found in India.
Winterfell Café, Srinagar
“All men must dine” is what the website of this Game of Thrones inspired café proclaims on its website. Inspired by the hit TV show, Winterfell Café’s brightly painted interiors and wooden furniture give it a strong medieval-era vibe. This themed cafe even has its own mock Iron Throne, house flags, books and artefacts from the show which only add to its charm. Items like the Chicken Mushroom Pot Pie, Pineapple Wrapped Chicken, and Salisbury steak are said to the most popular choices. The best part about the café, say its owners, is that they keep rearranging and adding little things which are reminiscent of the twists and turns in the series. Even if you’re unfamiliar with the show, we’re sure the café will inspire you to give it a watch!
Kaidi Kitchen, Kolkata and Chennai
Get ready to let your taste buds get arrested at Kaidi Kitchen, a jail-themed restaurant which takes full marks for originality. Designed to resemble a prison, the restaurant has tables that are placed in jail cells, where the servers are dressed like prisoners, and the managers are dressed like prison wardens. At the Kaidi Kitchen in Kolkata, the menu is completely vegetarian, but you shouldn’t just write it off without trying it out at least once. They believe that dining is an art and their chefs dabble in all sorts of cuisines ranging from North Indian and Chinese to Italian and Mongolian. The inside of the restaurant is spacious and pleasantly dramatic with it every cell, dimly lit, hosting a tastefully crafted marble table and wooden chairs and a wooden jail door.
The Bar Stock Exchange, Mumbai
Fish out your calculator and get ready for a night of numbers and beer. This unique bar-and-restaurant allows customers to trade in alcohol and spirits, with prices starting from as low as retail prices. The stakes to get your favourite drinks are at an all-time high along with the stocks! Conceptualized on the lines of the infamous stock exchanges, you can control the prices of all drinks and compete with other customers in real time. Head there for a night of drunken revelry and a range of moderately priced items like the Basil Chicken Tikka with its strong flavour of basil infused in spicy chicken tikka and the BBQ Chicken Quesadilla. Unlike the real share market, however, the rates are always kept within an affordable range and while you don’t need to break the bank to visit, a head for numbers does come in handy.
Rainforest Restaurant, Chennai
Step into this restaurant and it will engulf you with its green leafy décor complete with a thick canopy of trees and a lavish menu with a range of tasty options. Set in the heart of the city, this casual dining restaurant offers the experience of dining in a rainforest replete with trees, rocks, and sliding doors. Exotic European and Chinese cuisine will make your mouth water, especially the Thai Curry and fried rice. Find some solace in the arms of nature and dig into some yummy grilled tandoori amid a spooky and funky ambience.
Ohri’s 70 mm, Hyderabad
Ohri, naam toh suna hi hoga. Relive the spirit of Indian cinema at 70mm, a Bollywood themed restaurant. The décor speaks volumes about the evolution of Bollywood films and will make you feel as if you’re at a film set! The buffet experience will leave you wanting for more as they have stalls of around 50 different food items from paav bhaji, papdi chaat and dahi puri to prawn fried rice, veg handi and mutton masala. Humorous one-liners about food with a touch of filminess will bring a smile on your face. With the Hussain Sagar Lake on one side and Necklace road on the other, this lavishly spread restaurant will invoke the inner film-fanatic in you.
Dialogues Cafe, Bengaluru
You can eat as much as you want, you get access to free WiFi and a cosy space surrounded by books or an open-air view. Sound like the ideal café, right? With a little twist. Time is currency at this café. This curious little café in the busy city of Bangalore is more like a reverse workspace where the amount of time you spend here will determine how much you pay them. You can ‘be yourself’ here in a calm and quiet environment and get some work done. They charge Rs 190 for the first hour and then Rs 3 per minute, at a maximum charge of Rs 1,000 for a day. You can have as many snacks as you want and relax with a book in a comfortable armchair or beanbag. Among the unique traits of this café is the permission to order food from outside, or bring your own food.
