Bean buzz in cuppa capital

Not gonna lie, paying 350 bucks for a coffee isn’t always worth it. But then again, it’s not just the coffee, it’s the vibe. If the ambience feels good and the coffee holds up, I tell myself it’s worth it.

It’s evening in Bengaluru — a musky, heavy-scented evening thick with rain and light with clouds. It’s 2005, a year without smartphones, but a year of excitement for me. The then-sleepy suburb of Rajarajeshwari Nagar has a new entrant: a trendy, hip, and unbelievably cool cafe!

I wasn’t a coffee drinker, but I loved cafes. Cafes were ‘cool.’ And I wanted to show my dad all its coolness. But retired people in their 70s didn’t particularly care about coolness. He wanted coffee. South Indian filter coffee. And that the cafe didn’t have. ‘Try the cappuccino,’ I offered, scarcely knowing what it was myself. He agreed. Once it came, he stirred it with suspicion. The coffee was creamy, its milk-coated texture dissolving with the stirring. “How is it?” I asked, as if I were the barista. “It’s okay,” he said. “Not strong,” he added. I sat with my fancy latte, sipping it as one was supposed to. And my dad? He gulped the coffee down, just as he would if he were in a darshini.

That was the last time he went to a cafe. He still gulps his coffee down from a tumbler. It’s never a latte or espresso. Always, rich filter coffee, made with just-boiled milk, sweetened with sugar, served in steel lotas. House-bound as he is, I wonder what my dad would think of today’s cafes. What may he think of a South Indian filter coffee with condensed milk, a fusion of Vietnamese and Indian styles? Or would he enjoy the Chikmagalur single-origin coffee from a new and popular cafe? Would he grumble and say that his old haunts still make it best? Just as they did all those years ago when Bengaluru’s most-loved eateries were mostly tiny places famous for their coffees and idlis?

I tried to find the answers to those questions, sipping and gulping my way through Bengaluru’s growing cafe scene. As of May 2025, namma ooru is said to have over 700 cafes, with a large majority of them single-owned, while the rest are coffee chains. Typical spend ranges from Rs 300 to Rs 500, while premium cafes often average even more. It’s estimated that the average Bengalurean eats out six to eight times a month. That number of 700-odd cafes may seem small in comparison to a city like Seoul, which is supposed to have more than 20,000 cafes, making it one of the world’s most cafe-dense places. You can hardly walk 500m there without bumping into a coffee bean. But for Bengaluru, today’s new-age cafes are more than just coffee stops.

These cafes serve as aspirational spaces of belonging for today’s urban privileged. They form the ‘third space’ (not home, not office), hosting events, pop-up stalls, startup meetings, and book launches. You can still grab a cup of coffee at any of the city’s 5,000-odd darshinis and gulp it down like my father. You can still go to Bengaluru’s oldest cafes dotted around South Bengaluru just for a filter coffee. Or you can mingle with intellectuals at a famous haunt near M G Road. They are iconic institutions in their own right, but the newer cafes are now jostling for space, serving art, culture, and conversations with elan.

It’s the vibe, silly!

At one of Bengaluru’s hippest cafes, the buzz is evident even on a Wednesday afternoon. A courtyard of green and rustic charm awaits me as I navigate what seems more like a wine list than a coffee menu: Arabica coffee aged in a cask barrel, brewed over ice. A cappuccino with single-origin honey, topped with honey pollen.

Seated next to me are four young girls, presumably still in college. They seem undaunted by the prices, even though the honey cappuccino I am eyeing costs Rs 300. In another room, a ‘techie’ is with his laptop, on a call. Outside, overlooking the courtyard, two women wrestle with sandwiches. The space is sprawling, designed to host community events as well. It’s a quirky mix of old-world heritage with new-age coffees and cocoa, packed for today’s wallet-heavy youth. The pricing in such cafes can be daunting, admits Ankita Das, a young content marketer, based in Bengaluru. “Not gonna lie, paying 350 bucks for a coffee isn’t always worth it. But then again, it’s not just the coffee, it’s the vibe. I usually end up spending Rs 500–700 at a cafe, and if the ambience feels good and the coffee holds up, I tell myself it’s worth it.”

Her world is not one that Savitha Narasimhan is likely to inhabit soon. In her 50s, Savitha grew up with a love for filter coffee. “My coffee drinking journey began at the age of seven! As a child, I grew up watching my mom completely relaxed while having coffee. She would be in a meditative state, and her mood used to perk up after a cup. I used to request sips, and in six months, I graduated to a whole cup of coffee! No turning back after that!” she laughs.

Savitha admits she hasn’t tried too many of Bengaluru’s new cafes. The very ambience, which Ankita loves, with its music and vociferous youth, doesn’t attract her. The price is another deterrent. “I always prefer the filter coffee in a steel or brass lota/cup! It makes a difference, trust me. Cappuccino or latte is not for me. Somehow, the emotion stirred in the coffee is not present in a latte. A darshini coffee, had on the footpath, sometimes gives me more pleasure and relaxation than a latte in a coffee shop.”

To linger and to connect

Ankita agrees. Despite all the cafes she frequents, she still loves the strong filter coffee served in a steel tumbler at the darshinis. The cafes are more of a mood, a way to linger and connect for her. They can also be exclusionary due to the price and ambience. “Yeah, sometimes cafes can feel a bit exclusionary. You only see a certain type of crowd there, and not everyone feels like they fit in. Darshinis, I think, on the other hand, are the opposite. Everyone goes there, no judgment, quick food, super affordable. Cafes are more about ambience while darshinis are pure function,” Ankita explains. And ambience is definitely high on the menu at the next cafe I visit as part of my cafe-hopping tour of Bengaluru.

The place seems made for Instagram, complete with a hobbit cave, a curated bookstore, and dreamy outdoor seating. It’s also one of the few cafes that wants to be a space to nurture communities, especially the queer community. Cafes with bookstores aren’t new. Such cafes host several events almost every weekend, ranging from author panels to painting and pottery workshops.

Coffee and co-working

While such spaces take care of the cultural quotient, cafes serve another need: that of being co-working spaces for today’s startups and the gig community. You can walk into any new-age cafe, and you might not just have coffee, but also launch a startup while you sip away. For instance, a coffee chain launched in 2016 and known for its co-working ambience has quickly become one of India’s fastest-growing speciality coffee chains. It already has more than 160 cafes, competing in a space with other chains but differentiating itself with a focus on artisanal coffee. Its success has prompted other cafes to offer similar co-working vibes. Another cafe chain that has multiple locations across Bengaluru offers a co-working space where customers can work the whole day, even with just one order.

But working from one such cafe proved to be a strangely disconcerting experience for me. I was used to cafes as a place of relaxation, and associating them with a place of work seemed contradictory. It didn’t seem to matter to the folks who sat glued to a laptop. I gave up working and tried to read Jane Austen, but it was hard to linger in Regency England while the person next to me shouted about a US client.

What is it to actually work in a cafe, though? Not with a laptop but as a barista? I asked this question to Anima Nair, a neurodiversity advocate and consultant, whose son, Pranav, works as a barista at a cafe in Whitefield. “Working in a cafe has given him a sense of purpose. He takes a lot of pride in his work. He couldn’t go to college, so I think this was his first ever experience of being with a general crowd instead of only autistic individuals, like he had while training and studying,” Anima shares.

Pranav loves people, and creating different mocktails or coffees gives him a sense of satisfaction at the end of the day. Even though he is the only neurodivergent person in the cafe, the inclusive atmosphere has enabled him to thrive. There are other fully inclusive cafes with multiple outlets in the city, where the staff are adults with physical, intellectual or psychiatric disabilities.

Craft or filter?

And we are back to where we started. It was in Rajarajeshwari Nagar that my dad first tried his first and last cappuccino. That old cafe is no longer there. The area now has swankier cafes, including an art cafe, a bakehouse cafe, cafes with board games, co-working cafes, and, of course, even one named after the good-old filter coffee. For a quick cuppa, you can start with the filter coffee, settle down at the next one for work, and then wind up at a third to have coffee with red velvet cupcakes. Two decades ago, this kind of choice was unthinkable. Now, it seems unthinkable that there isn’t a bookstore cafe or a craft coffee shop yet.

My dad may still not like these arty cafes. But there are still plenty of darshinis that will give him his beloved steel tumbler coffee. He may still gulp it down, hurriedly. But there will be another crowd that will also make its way to a cafe, armed with laptops and books, and settle down ready to order their favourite mocha latte, a bagel or two, and Wi-Fi to while those long hours away. It’s here, in this curious city where a darshini can jostle next to a fancy cafe, that we know that the past is always racing towards the future.