Coffee offers alternative brew in chaa-loving Kolkata

On a late November afternoon last year, I found Prateek Didwania pottering about behind an Astoria Storm Espresso Machine inside an Art Deco bungalow on Kolkata’s Ray Street. It was just before he and his partners Aditya Ladsaria and Piyush Kankaria opened the doors to Yours Truly Coffee Roasters, a 15,000 sq ft café cum experience centre. The smell of fresh paint mingled with the aroma of coffee as Didwania brewed a fresh cup for me. We took a tour of the seating areas, coffee classroom, roastery, and kitchen, where experts from Bengaluru’s Lavonne Academy were training the staff.

Over the past decade, Kolkata has witnessed a proliferation of cafés that serve up a litany of beverages like frappes and lattes and other coffee-flavoured concoctions. A serious engagement with coffee, its elemental nuances, origins, practices is more recent. “Besides, cafés here were built around the idea of adda, as a space for conversation, but that is changing,” says Didwania. “People now know that coffee could have notes of nougat and fig.”

The gradual shift was perhaps initiated by the entry of Indian specialty coffee chains—Hyderabad-based Roastery opened its outlet in 2019, followed by Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters that started operations the year after. Coffee aficionados also know about Cafe 108, an appointment-only coffee shop in Tangra. In March 2021, Abhinav Kumar and Dipraj Das opened a new chapter by launching Craft Coffee from a kiosk on Park Street. Over the next few years they have launched sprawling, multi-level experience centres and multiple outlets.

Didwania also launched his coffee-forward 55-seater cafe Pico last year at Vivekananda Park. “We believe we are riding the fourth wave of coffee, which is about looking at coffee through the lens of science, technology and sustainability,” he adds. An IIM Kozhikode graduate, he trained under renowned coffee expert Marc Tormo in Auroville. “At Pico, the focus is on bean-expertise and respect for beans,” says Didwania, who roasts his own beans sourced from estates like Salawara, Thogarihunkal and Sangameshwar in Karnataka. The cold brews are 18-hour long extraction, and come in half-pint bottles. There’s cold brew infused with cranberry or gondhoraj lime, and oaky, smoky, caramelly cold brew aged in whiskey-barrels and run-barrels at the Harley Estate.

Sustainability is also at the core of Colab Coffee, started by husband-wife duo Vinay Manglani and Natasha Suri, in 2021. The couple’s love for coffee and expertise draws from years of travel. They recently opened a second outlet near Deshapriya Park with clay-washed walls, bare bricks and earthy decor. “We have turned to award-winning SCA certified roasters to roast our beans sourced from estates like Ratnagiri, Riverdales, and Kerehaklu,” says Suri. They have also imported special filters from Australia in order to maintain precise PH levels and minerals in the water they use to make coffee. “We are trying to fine tune every cup of coffee,” Manglani says, adding that their analogue brews are a rage, especially the March Mellow, an 18-hour slow drip cold brew made with beans harvested in March.

Cafés are even investing in Barista-training programmes, tasting workshops and other efforts to educate people about coffee. Café owners also point to a growing interest in home-brewing. “People want to learn about brewing techniques and equipment to move beyond grab-and-go caffeine kick,” says Manglani.

Entrepreneur Siddhant Singhania spent years visiting boutique cafés hoarding café equipment and sourcing beans from around the world. He started out by launching Evabrew easy drip or pour-over bags. His primary interest lies in the nuances of roasting coffee, and he began his journey as a roaster with a 2kg coffee roasting machine. Today, he supplies customised, small-batch roasts to about 90 cafés across the city. In 2023, he opened a pocket-sized café called Evabrew in the garage of an old Kolkata building in a lane near Deshapriya Park. A second outlet came up in Salt Lake next year. His expertise lies in introducing mixology to coffee “I wanted to create a menu that would exhaust my guests, not bore them,” he says. He sources his coffee from estates like Ratnagiri and Barbara, and often explores innovative and quirky ferments like frozen cherry or pineapple.

Potboiler Cafe, which started out with an outlet in 2019, has also built a reputation for good coffee. Run by Sonali Lakhotia and husband Devansh Chhinkwani, it is known for their quirky infusions. The Orange Palace, a cinnamon-spiked concoction of coffee and fresh orange juice is a bestseller.

Didwania’s Yours Truly Coffee, is in full swing now, roping in customers with their signature coffees like the Ratnagiri Light Roast Pour Over. Besides, there’s a wide range of signature beans sourced from estates like Garighekhan and Thogarihunkal in Chikmagalur. Take Sweet Love, the honey-sundried beans with notes of plum, raspberry and cherry, or Crema Noir replete with hints of wine, chocolate, caramel and blueberry. Every beverage is created with a keen eye for detail and a deep understanding of bean profile. And there’s something for every palate.

Priyadarshini Chatterjee is a food and culture writer who divides her time between Kolkata and Mumbai.