Mag St. Bandra — Restaurant in Mumbai

As a 15-year Bandra West resident familiar with the area's dining evolution from Salt Water Cafe to Indigo to Smoke House Deli to Pali Village Cafe and Perch, I recently visited Mag St. Bandra for afternoon tea and dessert. While the food quality shows promise, the overall experience was disappointing due to significant service issues.

The problems began at reception, where the hostess seemed overly rigid about reservations for a Thursday afternoon when the restaurant was half empty. Despite coming in for tea and desserts during off-peak hours, I was initially restricted to a one-hour time limit and seated in uncomfortable spots directly under AC vents. After some discussion, a manager did accommodate a table change, though the interaction felt unnecessarily complicated.

Throughout my visit, the staff's approach seemed at odds with the restaurant's positioning as an all-day dining venue. The manager hovered uncomfortably close while explaining their transition away from being a café, despite this being their established identity. While I understand they now serve alcohol, many respected establishments in Bandra (including Smoke House, Perch, and even the high end Taj Lands End) successfully balance casual dining with bar service without compromising customer comfort.

The ham and cheese croissant was well-prepared and tasty. However, basic service elements were lacking – getting water refills required constant effort despite the restaurant being only half full. The restroom experience was concerning, with lights that periodically cut out, creating an unsettling environment.

Positives: Good food quality Convenient location Clean premises

Areas for improvement: Staff training in customer service More flexible seating policies and more casual “all day” vibe Consistent service attention Bathroom lighting maintenance Better alignment between casual dining positioning and service approach

You are an all day diner that serves alcohol. You are not a fine dining establishment and will never be. Maintain the casual comfort and essence of a casual diner - rushing people is anathema to establishments such as yours. Merely dropping “cafe” from Mag St. doesn’t make you an elite fine dining restaurant. Lol. 😆 And none of the fine dining restaurants behave like this either except during weekends for dinner if they are THAT popular.

TLDR: Food is good. But get over...

Upon informing waiter of a food allergy, he wasn't sure about ingredients so manager came up. Manager's recommendation was to not eat anything on the entire menu as there was a chance, albeit small, of cross contamination. Never heard this at a restaurant before.

He emphasized that all their food is fried in the same oil and so nothing fried was "safe". Most restaurants have separate fryers for veg and non veg (and then even have different ones for non veg). I thought this was bizarre.

Besides that, all the food was very average. Most of the stuff on the menu is just deep fried which was not impressive at all. Furthermore, I thought the food was rather expensive for the portion sizes and the underwhelming taste. Overall, do not recommend this restaurant at all.

Update: your reply completely misrepresented the situation. Your manager gave us a response that my mom has not heard in 30+ years of having this allergy. When we told him about this, he tried to flex his credentials of working at a Cordon Bleu restaurant in London which was classless in my opinion. We’ve eaten at Dhabas and Michelin star restaurants and still never experienced this.

Besides this, she enjoyed the sea bass the first time she visited your restaurant. This time, however, she was told that the Mirin broth it came with was not safe to eat. I thought this was ridiculous because Mirin broth should not have any kind of shellfish/fish sauce in it.

Again, your job as a restaurant manager is to reassure customers that you’re doing your best to make sure they’re safe. Not stress them out unnecessarily into eating the bland and...

We visited for a birthday dinner, here’s how it went. The service was good, we made a reservation, it was pretty full for 8pm. Only the birthday girl had a drink and she liked it the rest of us had iced teas and mocktails which were also well made.

The decor & ambiance was nice, seems like it would be a good lunch spot too.

To the food; We ordered •lobster roll •crab fried rice •lamb ragú parpadelle • Lobster Mac & cheese

The lobster roll we had before and it was just as nice.

The crab fried rice was really delicious and well balanced in flavour.

The lamb ragú I didn’t try because it was gone really quick, everyone liked it.

To my order… the Mac & cheese. Oh man was this disappointing. Lack of cheese, lack of salt, butter & general flavour. It was mostly bechamel & breadcrumbs with lobster chunks. For a dish that costs more than 1000₹ the sheer lack of cheese used actually pissed me off. Everyone said this was bland. Would advise removing this dish from the menu it was genuinely just not good.

Overall it was a decent meal and we would visit again— but order the Mac & cheese at your own risk, you’ve been warned, it’s a pan of bland Mac n bechamel with breadcrumbs. I’m annoyed I’ll now have to rebake with cheese from my house, add salt just basically try and fix it since I don’t want...