The Long Afternoon of the Bombay Café

The cafés of old Bombay kept odd hours and longer memories. A marble table, a ceiling fan turning against the heat, a pot of chai that never entirely emptied — the Leopolds and Britannias were where the city argued with itself over food and drink, and nobody was ever hurried out.

We built the Munkey around that habit rather than around a menu. Candlelight, cane, a bar that takes its cocktails seriously, and family recipes cooked at the pace they were written for.

Six hours, in the case of the butter chicken. Tandoor-fired tikka is folded late into a tomato sauce that has been reducing since the afternoon, so it arrives tasting of patience rather than cream. It is the dish people come back for, and the one we are least willing to rush.

The bar keeps the same logic. Fresh juice, frosted crystal, and a shelf of Indian rums and whiskeys that were difficult to find on this side of the city when we opened in 2013.

Every night from ten o’clock we serve a hot meal to anyone who needs one — a practice we have kept since 2020, and the part of the room we are proudest of.

This page collects what we would otherwise only say across the bar: recipes, room notes, the occasional argument about ice.