Editor's Pick

MF HUSAIN once asked for a second coffee, Rajkumar was a regular, and MK Gandhi—in portrait form—has always been here. You can tell a true Bangalorean from the wannabes by their quality of anecdotes about the India Coffee House on MG Road. It has been a social barometer to the extent that in times of upheaval, people knew they were better off at home if all its entrances were shut during working hours, as they were after Indira Gandhi’s assassination.

Set up by communist AK Gopalan as a workers’ co-operative in the late 1950s, India Coffee House has been inseparable from the Bangalore narrative ever since. Its pure coffee (the powder straight from the Coffee Board with no added chicory) and omelettes are tourist attractions in their own right.

Stuck in a legal battle over the MG Road property since 2002, the continual rumours of its impending shutdown have had the locals on tenterhooks. Last year it was finally forced to leave its original space and relocate to Church Street. Though the quintessential India Coffee House experience is inevitably diluted, a precious part of Bangalore’s heritage manages to survive.