Best Mumbai cafes for people-watching and eavesdropping

The night before I left for the French capital, a Parisian friend who is based in Mumbai gave me some advice -- choose your café wisely.

To know a city, she reasoned, one must befriend its cafés.

Even if you’d rather drink tea and eat cake; even if the coffee is underwhelming and over-brewed and even if that Wi-Fi remains promised.

Unlike bars that share a symbiotic relationship with alcohol, at cafés, it’s the people that are important.

People walk into cafés not just for the coffee. They work, read, meet and network, dress up to be seen, or like this writer, watch and listen.

People-watching is a fine art.

New Yorkers know this, as do Londoners and especially Parisians.

In Paris, cafés always have some sort of al fresco area facing the most interesting part of the street.

Similarly in Mumbai, location is key and what you want to see and hear is directly related to it.

Suburban Bollywood buzz

Both Bandra and Andheri cafés are magnets for what we call "creative-types."

The difference is that the former suburb attracts more established hipsters -- eccentric, but drives an Audi -- while Andheri is its aspirational version.

Because both places also offer excellent celeb-spotting opportunities, cafés, especially the more visible ones, are almost always crowded and humming with Bollywood buzz.

My most fascinating eavesdropping evenings have been spent at Gloria Jean on Turner Road in Bandra and at the Costa Coffee outlets in Khar and Seven Bungalows.

It helps that the server at Gloria Jean goes to great lengths to find me a table even if the café is spilling over.

An actress and an assistant director indulge in a 45-minute abuse-fest about their director; two model-actors wonder if Karan Johar would come to the café today again; a singer obsesses over wanting to get married but declares: “I’m too famous to even register on shaadi.com.”

Priceless.

In a further suburb called Versova, you can hear murmurs of another sort of desperation.

A nervous scriptwriter explaining his neatly-bound tome to an uninterested director; a TV starlet worried about her relationship with her boyfriend who’s eight years younger and plays her on-screen son; a once-famous-now-oldish actor contemplating making an appearance at a forthcoming party.

Because Mumbai is entertainment central, both women and men look flawless in their respective blow-dries and waxed skins.

There’s a reason for this, of course.

There’s always the possibility of a designer, director or producer walking in, or a talent scout sitting at another table.

After my first month sitting around in Mumbai's cafés, I learned that impromptu meetings might seem unusual but they really aren’t.

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Sobo labels, laptops and lattes

Because of its location and free Wi-Fi, the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf at Nariman Point always has a huge button-down wearing population that’s probably too bored to sit in the office.

Frantically hammering away at not-meant-for-hammering-MacBooks, the executives almost always pay more attention to their spreadsheet than their coffee.

Free Wi-Fi (the two golden words in café-speak) also draws freelance writers, columnists, stand-up comedians and tourists.

The Bagel Shop on Pali Hill in Bandra, in fact, has three Wi-Fi zones because of the massive number of laptop carriers planting themselves there.

Strangely though, Le Pain Quotidien, the Colaba outpost of the Belgian café chain, hasn’t made good on its promise of free Internet.

Turns out, just as cafés in New York have started to withdraw this free perk, a number of them in Mumbai initially decided but later scrapped plans of free Wi-Fi.

Three hours of couch space plus Wi-Fi with one cup of coffee might make for a great story but doesn’t make much business sense.

Thankfully number-crunching financial analysts aren’t the only café regulars in South Mumbai.

Townie label-lovers, with a penchant for Gucci’s interlocked Gs and Louis Vuitton’s overlapping LVs can often be spotted whizzing past.

Equipped with nannies, they fuss over their low-fat latte.

Unlike regulars, they aren’t loyal to any one place and café-hop depending on its "it" status.

This dichotomy is visible most starkly (more stark than the café’s rugged white walls) at Kala Ghoda Café.

Rather than being located on the tourist-ridden Colaba Causeway, the Kala Ghoda Café is hidden in a lane behind Rhythm House.

The small ground floor plus mezzanine café doubles up as exhibition space for art and photography while its coffees are grown organically in South India.

Geographically and architecturally, the café should attract art appreciators, photographers and soy latte-loving foreigners.

And yet, every time I’ve made myself comfortable here, I’ve either stared at finance people from Fort (free Wi-Fi yet again) or at women taking a breather from shopping at the Sabyasachi store across the street.

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The small matter of food

It’s amusing that chain cafés continue to pretend that they’re interested in serving good food.

The Baristas, Café Coffee Days, Costa Coffees and Gloria Jeans should get together, decide they’ll charge for the space and consistent-tasting coffee and call it a day.

Till that happens, choose any of the following stand-alone cafés.

Juhu's Prithvi Café, all fairy-lights and stone benches, is the best place to engage in all three activities: eat, drink and watch.

Most evenings, theater actors and directors, audiences and curious tourists, provide the music-less café next to Prithvi Theatre with its buzz.

After a mug of their famed Irish coffee, Prithvi Café samosas are also quite satisfying.

Wich Latte in Colaba serves an excellent breakfast and equally interesting traveler tales.

Le Pain Quotidien’s communal table, though still being met with skepticism, is gradually becoming popular, as is the café’s homemade bread pudding.

Kala Ghoda Café does a mean carrot cake with clotted cream, and its all-day breakfast menu, though small, is fulfilling.

On the other side of the sealink, Bandra's Bagel Shop is your best bet for fresh bagels and a place for your pet.

At Theobroma off Linking Road, you get the best brownies with your cold coffee.

Lemon Tree Café does standard fare coffee but their sandwiches and salads make up for the lightweight brew.

Besides, who can say no to an outdoor bench?

Sometimes it's the randomest things that count.

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