On a sunny morning, we navigate a busy street in Girgaum where the sound of traffic and barking strays descend into a grand chaos within our head. The buzzing noise fades away when we find a nook and the first thing we hear is, "How may I help you?" The space we settle into seems to have a life of its own, with marble-topped tables and wooden chairs from erstwhile Czechoslovakia. Cosmopolitan Restaurant and Stores, it reads. Facing us is a weathered Ovaltine Rusks poster from the 1930s, an indicator of the time around when the restaurant came to be.

When Khodabux Merwan Nasrabadi Irani came to Bombay after completing his education in Poona in 1920, he arrived with entrepreneurial spirit albeit very little knowledge of the city. Cosmopolitan wasn't his first property. Irani had acquired Good Luck restaurant and The Famous Pharmacy in the vicinity. The restaurant back then served only chai with biscuits sourced from bakeries elsewhere. That changed when his son, Rustom Khodabux Irani, took over in the 50s, determined to start baking himself.