It's OK, spill the beans

India's café scene is a quarter-century old. See what's in, what's out, what's brewing and what's trending these days

- Tanisha Saxena [e-mail]

To know how far India’s café culture has come, just pop into your local Barista. This, roughly, is where it all began, in the year 2000. Young people in big cities had satellite TV. They'd watched Chandler, Phoebe and the Friends gang chill at Central Perk. So, when something similar opened locally, there were queues, crowds and chatter on how to say espresso. (Ess-press-oh, not Ex-press-oh? Oh!)

Let’s zip through the quarter-century that followed. Major franchises got our attention (Hello, Costa Coffee and Di Bella; bye-bye Gloria Jean’s, Le Pain What-idien?). Cafés dotted every al fresco nook. Cappuccino came in huge mugs. We ordered off chalkboard menus. At homegrown chains such as Mocha, the coffee was good, the service slow and all the furniture was on sale. We developed preferences: Flat white, dark roast, doppio, soymilk-decaf, cold brew. And Barista outlets eventually began selling chips and nutritional supplements alongside their coffee.

So, what does it take to run a cool café? Exotic brews alone won't do it; there must be Wi-Fi too. Chalkboard specials are cringe; but the food can’t be blah. See what’s brewing.

Magic beans

Even a decade ago, a trendy café was one that would serve a Colombian roast, a Vietnamese coffee, something in a cafetière à piston, and a Balinese brew. Now, the focus is firmly on single-origin, homegrown beans. “Cafés that celebrate hyper-local sourcing and farm-to-cup transparency resonate,” says Aditi Dugar, founder of Araku Café.