Inseparable from Bangalore

Always putting the customer first, Koshy's has survived the test of time.

There is something about Koshy's for anyone who has lived and breathed Bangalore. It is a natural progression during your growth in the city that one day you find yourself there. It was the coffee that took me there first.

For years I overheard my dad over the phone: "Six o' clock at Koshy's it is then?" One day I found out for myself what attracted him to the tablecloth with the bright red checks, wooden tables, large pillars and the big ceiling fan slowly twirling away the smoke from all the tobacco.

Right in the heart of Bangalore's happening quarter, St Mark's Road to be precise, Koshy's began in 1940 as a "fully automatic" bakery.

Parade Cafe, Koshy's restaurant, began in 1952-53 and since then has been a haunt for politicians (nobodies, insignificant, medium, or big), professors, journalists, lawyers and people of all kinds of orientations.

Jewel Box began a few years back adjacent to the Parade Cafe, air-conditioned for the passive smokers. And the bakery is still there along with a snack bar called Chill-Out.

The Koshy Group now also stands for confectionary products, catering services, grocery stores and automobile service facilities, and in its third generation, is still family-owned.

Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, dignitaries Marshal Tito, Nikita Khrushchev and Queen Elizabeth II have sampled the timeless constituents of the menu.

You can start off with the potato smileys and then there is bacon omlette, fish and chips, Bombay masala toast, chicken patties, avial, Kerala style kozhi curry and the appam and stew on Sundays.

The proprietor today is Prem Koshy. Hang around with him and you will get anecdotes such as, "During the Emergency the price for dosa was fixed by the government "" 25 paise. We have always followed the law and my father said, well, let's sell at that. We always made the customer first and carried on..."

In 2006, Koshy's was, well, awarded the Most Stylish Place by none other than MTV for "withstanding the test of time".