The Konkan Cafe — Restaurant in Mumbai

Recently I visited The Konkan Cafe for dinner along with my sister. Ambience of the restaurant is just perfect to enjoy a romantic date or meal with your family. It is designed like a traditional open house of South India. They play melodic Carnatic music which is very soothing to hear 🎶 They have stars on the ceiling to give you the exact feel of sky lit nights. It comes with a comfortable seating area, with intricate design all over the place, using high quality wood or stone platforms and soft cushions 😍 The utensils used here are made of panchdhatu. It is an alloy of 5 Metals gold, silver, copper, iron and zinc.

We were invited to experience the new specially curated comfort food menu which brings flavours from the 5 states of South India 😋

All the food items were divine and suggested by their head chef Mr. Vikas 😍 Here’s what we tried -

Coolers/beverages- • Buttermilk • Solkadhi: made from coconut milk & kokum.

Comfort food menu-

• Kovil Idly: Pepper & ginger spiced idly, made temple style. • Kanjivaram uttapam: rice pancakes with onion, peanut, coriander and kanjivaram masala. • Paniyaram Vadai: grilled fermented rice and split black lentil dumpling • Navadhanya Dosai: nutritious multigrain rice crepes • Thair Idly: Idly with sweet and sour chilled curd.

Condiments- White coconut chutney, red onion chutney, til oil/jinjil, gunpowder/molgapodi served with piping hot Sambar.

Appetisers-

Guntur chilli mushroom: fresh mushrooms tossed with guntur chilli

Baby corn miriyalu: crispy baby corn tossed in freshly grounded spices

Main course -

Appam

Neer dosa

Kolam Pattani: corn & green peas cooked in chettinad style.

Desserts-

Jalebi

Elaneer payasam: a cold dessert with tender coconut and jaggery.

Overall my experience here was wonderful. Food is very flavourful and soul-satisfying

Perhaps the best part about staying at President by IHCL is Konkan Cafe, well so far as I’m concerned.

While I’ve ordered food from here in the room, this was the first time I stepped into the outlet to enjoy my meal, given that I had about an hour parked for dinner.

Since I was a lone diner, I decided to order the Non-Veg Thali - an unlimited fixed meal. They started me off with fried papad and three chutneys, the garlic chutney being easily amongst the best things I have consumed on the chutney front, possibly ever.

The main meal featured a piece of pan fried fish, raw papaya salad, raita, malwani chicken, fish curry, mutton curry, a dal based preparation and a vegetable dish. I opted to not have the last two items served. They also serve Rice, Malabar Parota, Appam and Neer Dosa with the meal.

The fish curry, I believe Mean Moilee is what was served, was spectacular. Delicate, flavourful and really fresh. The mutton curry was a bit spicy, perfectly balanced. The chicken had a kick, delicious with the sweetish appams. The fish fry was purely wholesome, the right item to start the meal.

Then came the dessert - Kulfi, Jalebi and Payasam. The Jalebi was super crisp and the right amount of sweet, the kulfi was delicious. I’m not a fan of Payasam in general so no comments there.

The staff made the experience better in all honesty. Attentive, polite, and honestly better than most high-end restaurants.

Now excited about my next visit and the delicious food...

Update March 2025

The food remains great, however the service was seriously slack. They were seriously understaffed and while our server (Sameer) was a great guy he truly struggled to get to all the tables. The older waiters and the manager (Nilesh) were of not much help. We tried giving constructive feedback to the manager but he just did not show for 5 minutes. Frustrated we left - Never to return.

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An upscale take on traditional south Indian food. The place offers dishes from the entire west coast of India from konkani to Goan to malayali cuisine.

Their sea food thali hits all the right notes, starting with the amazing chutneys, papads and masala filled deep fried chillis going to the mains which had a mix of coastal preparations.

Their prawns in kokam garlic and fish allepey are to die for. The rassam to start your meal is the perfect level of spice with an incredible amount of flavour.

Do try their feni cocktails, will transport you to goa instantly.

All in all a great place, with amazing service and brilliant food.

A special thanks to laxmikant who was attentive and accomodating to our requests.

A place worthy of...