My Table In The Corner

Koshy’s is a lovely little time warp on St Mark’s Road. Step inside and suddenly you’re back in the old, vanished Bangalore of the ’70s, before the IT boom and the pushy corporate types, traffic jams and pollution. It’s a crowded, bustling joint with whirring fans and waiters in white bandgala coats, full of loud conversation and the clatter of old cutlery. Prem Koshy is the genial owner and host, the third generation of his family to run the place. Set up in 1940, Koshy’s boasts of having fed everybody from Pandit Nehru to Queen Elizabeth. Its regulars are a democratic bunch of journalists, students, retired folks, theatrewalas and Lonely Planet tourists, all tucking into old-fashioned favourites like chicken patties, bacon-and-eggs, liver-on-toast, roast chicken, fish curry or something with a large dollop of their trademark "mayo-ketchup mix". People often know the waiters by name, and old Bangaloreans now living elsewhere drop by, because that’s one sure way of bumping into old friends. Come here on Sunday morning for their special appams-and-stew. Or just dawdle over a coffee, eavesdropping on conversations.