It is mid-morning when we walk into the spacious confines of a new The Bengaluru Café on Juhu’s Gulmohar Road. Founders Vikas Subramani and Varun Timmegowda are busy working out the logistics before the big opening day. “Have some coffee,” is an immediate follow-up from Subramani, reflecting a Bengaluru response that traces back to this writer’s childhood summers spent in The Garden City. There is a reason Marcel Proust called food as the key to involuntary memory.

Juhu expansion

In 2017, the two US-returned IT professionals opened their first outlet in Jayanagar in Bengaluru. “I wanted to apply the Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) systems over there, with consistent standard operating procedures (SOPs) to South Indian food,” Subramani shares.