Honest review of Bandra's newest retro-themed cafe

The interiors of the café offer a quaint nostalgic feel

Nestled in the heart of a neighbourhood that's desperately holding on to the last vestiges of its cultural past is Nostalgia, the latest retro-cool kid in Bandra's vibrant café scene. Located on the Bandstand-end of Hill Road, cheek by jowl beside another Bandra landmark, the Yacht Resto Bar, the café is the creation of the makers of the achingly hip Bandstand Pantry, which is famed in equal parts for its Instagrammable décor and unpredictable service, as well as the droves of unwitting brunch-ers it draws in on weekends.

Audio cassette tapes on the walls

Our curiosity about whether the café had anything more than its admittedly iconic location and décor in common with its name, we decided to step in for breakfast on a rainy Sunday morning. The café is housed in a beautiful heritage property built in 1914, and has the type of pastel pink, vintage diner-inspired aesthetic that is closer in appeal to Zoya Akhtar's The Archies movie sets than Bandra's decidedly Anglo-Portuguese past. However, the bright sunflowers and large picture windows adorned with all manner of vintage memorabilia - including vintage radios, Duke's brightly coloured glass soda bottles, and old magazines - had us intrigued.

Egg mayo sandwich, paneer tikka roll

Regulars at Bandra's Candies and Café Andora will immediately recognise the café's layout, which is centred around a large glass display case containing the sweet and savoury fare. The menu is inspired by quick bites you might expect to find at the aforementioned eateries, and also mimics the formers' very affordable (for Bandra) prices. After some discussion, we settled on the egg and mayo sandwich (Rs 95), a paneer tikka roll (Rs 130) and a chocolate croissant (Ra 55), with a chocolate brownie (Rs 95) and Dutch pastry (Rs 115) for dessert. To wash it all down, we opted for the only coffee option on the menu - filter coffee (Rs 40), which was served to us piping hot in a paper cup. Service is quite prompt, which is to be expected considering the food requires no preparation save plating on disposable paper plates.

Dutch pastry and Chocolate croissant. Pics/Anindita Paul

The sandwich was quite filling; the bread was fresh and soft; our breakfast companion, however, found the scent of vanilla too overwhelming for a delicate dish. The ‘masala' in the roll was undercooked and a tad too salty, while the chocolate croissant had such a meagre smear of chocolate in it that we had to clarify if it was what we had ordered. For this writer, the biggest disappointment was the lack of variety in coffee, which is an unusual take for a café that finds itself in the epicentre of Bandra's coffee revolution, and has the quintessential coffee-to-go windows that have become a staple at all recent Bandra establishments. They do make up with additional nostalgic drinks, including Milo, Horlicks and Sulaimani tea, and so we chalked it up to a personal preference. The brownie, as our companion remarked, reminded us of the kind of bakes that our mothers would batch-make for us in sheet pans, while the Dutch pastry was decadent but could have used a bit of soaking syrup in the sponge.

The café is quite compact - one large, statement table that is tastefully decorated with vintage cartoons is the focal point, with bar-style seating and smaller tables-for-two tucked away in the corners. The servers are friendly and good-naturedly sport the rather costume-y uniforms, and will readily offer you tiny samples of their desserts. If we were to sum up the top reasons why you should go to Nostalgia, they would undoubtedly be the cutesy, quirky theme, old-fashioned food, and earnest prices. It's the type of place that's perfect for a leisurely brunch or a quick coffee break during a shopping trip. And it's the type of place that brings together the best of old-world and new-world Bandra.

Nostalgia
At 29, Hill Road, Bandra West.
Time 7 am to 12 am
Log on to @nostalgiabombay on Instagram