Can mithai and baklava replace chocolate? Two Mumbai stores try to find out

Hopping across some mishtan bhandars of Jaipur two years ago, the young and curious team of Hunger Inc Hospitality did something that can make a shop owner’s demeanour go quickly from welcoming to vexed. The group, who like all potential customers had been encouraged to taste the sweets, was carefully trying one of everything but buying nothing. “After a couple of times, I began asking them to charge us for 100 grams of mithai and let us sample the lot,” chuckles co-founder Yash Bhanage. This pocket-friendly window shopping was part of research for the food company’s Bombay Sweet Shop, which the company recently opened in South Mumbai.

The Byculla-based establishment hopes to reinvent sugary Indian treats and make them a fashionable gifting idea again. The quest to understand traditional sweet-making also led the new store’s head chef Girish Nayak to intern with halwais in Kolkata, Lucknow, Mangaluru and Coimbatore. On his return, he began testing to marry that traditional wisdom with unexpected ingredients and chef-school tricks. So the humble besan laddoo, for instance, was coated with hazelnut chips resembling the outside of a Ferrero Rocher. And the ghee-laden patissa was reimagined as the sticky layer of a Five Star-esque chocolate bar.

The humble besan laddoo, for instance, was coated with hazelnut chips resembling the outside of a Ferrero Rocher.

To keep the mithai project a secret for two years, the folks at Hunger Inc — led by entrepreneurs Bhanage and Sameer Seth, and chef Floyd Cardoz — made up a story that chef Nayak, who was seen around their restaurants a lot, was a sourdough baker from a hipster joint in Bandra. The company runs Bombay Canteen in Lower Parel, which has been popularising seasonal Indian ingredients, and O Pedro in Bandra-Kurla Complex, which serves Goan-Portuguese cuisine.

Willy Wonka’s factory meets Bombay Art Deco in the new shop space located in the Rani Baug area in a property that previously housed a printing press

Willy Wonka’s factory meets Bombay Art Deco in the new shop space located in the Rani Baug area in a property that previously housed a printing press. Murals and unserious slogans — “Don’t stop believing in barfi”, “You can’t say bye without mithai” — cover the walls, and the design of the counters was inspired by the city’s heritage cinema halls. One of the counters is laid out such that visitors can make their own chikki with a range of nuts and seeds. A schedule board tells visitors what sweet is being made fresh at a given hour — milk cake at 4.15 pm, nankhatais at 5.15 pm.

The menu items are sweetened with restraint keeping in mind the health-conscious, says Seth. The shop attempts to do a few other things. It makes sweets bite-sized so that they are less sinful to eat, and more expensive to look at. Each piece claims between Rs 50 and Rs 80.

When consumer research revealed that people often question the cleanliness of Indian sweet shops, Seth and team decided to put to rest any such doubts by letting customers peer into the open kitchen. Just like traditional mithai shops, there are savoury offerings and beverages to break the monotony of sugar. One house favourite seems to be the malai toast — a crisp slice of bread topped surprisingly with a pao-flavoured ice-cream rather than just clotted cream.

Over the next months, the shop plans to be seen online, at weddings and corporate events, and eventually perhaps at airports. Travel, which drives their research, had also fuelled the foray into sweets. During a layover at Istanbul airport some years ago, Bhanage noticed how baklava sellers proudly showed off their heritage. “We want to do the same for Indian mithai.”