Old school Irani with a side of beer

Bar Name - Churchgate Bar and Restaurant

Price of Beer - Rs. 120 for LP

Location – Churchgate near KC College

Size of the Bar – Small

Place Availability – Easy to get a table but this place looks like it could get quickly packed 

Ambience – Quiet and open air. If the weather is nice this place is awesome!

Unique Plus Point – Ridiculously cheap pitchers and proper nice Parsi food

Rating – 4 out of 5 Beers

Old wooden benches and tables, high ceilings with long, low fans, Parsi food and exactly 3 drinks on the menu – all of them beer. That’s Churchgate Bar and Restaurant, a quaint little place located just down the road from Churchgate station near those classic acronyms of education KC and HR.

It’s a place that is as old school as old school can get with everything feeling like it’s straight out of the 1980’s. Thankfully the beer, whether it be from the pitchers or the bottles, is as fresh and cool as any you’ve ever had. And probably the cheapest as well with a bottle of LP burning just a 120 rupee sized hole in your pocket. The food is also great and not unreasonably priced and the ancient Irani feel just makes you want to chill here for hours at a stretch. As such it is my solemn belief that an evening here will leave you feeling better about life, the universe and everything really. Except that is, when you go to the washroom to take a leak. That’s when things go downhill…

It’s indescribable really but I’m going to try, because in all my years of haunting this city’s cheap bars I have never once seen a washroom this odd. Sure some RGV movies have shots of places like these but I assumed that those were sets created by guys who wanted to create a metaphor for the chronic decay of society. I didn’t know they were real.

It’s not the most unhygienic washroom, in that it seems like they clean it, but getting there is an adventure in and of itself. Actually the closest comparison I could find for this washroom is the island from Lost.

Why is the bathroom at Churchgate Bar like the island from Lost:

• First, you walk by the kitchen and then take a turn into what looks like a small dark alley (A proper street inside a restaurant…looooosssssttttt)
• Then you turn and find that this lane is flooded with water. (It isn’t even raining outside and it isn’t washroom overflow…loooooossstttt)
• Then you walk further down this lane and find three different types of mysterious ‘growths’ on the wall. (Dharma initiative running moss and mildew experiments?...loooosssssttttt)
• There are two washrooms. One has a regular light bulb and the other has a freaking black light. (a freaking black light… loooooossstttt)
• There is, I fuck with you not, a metal circular staircase that leads to nowhere (holy motherfucker… loooooossstttt)

To be honest with you the washroom actually adds to the awesomeness of the place and if you can withstand it you’ll never want to drink anywhere else. I highly recommend good old Churchgate to anyone with a hankering for a nice cool beer.

Where have all the ad-men gone?

Bar - Madira 

Location – Parel East. Next to the ITC Hotel and opposite the offices of MTV and Grey Worldwide.

Size – Medium sized joint.

Place – Weeknights are usually jam packed but you'll get a place if you wait for a bit. On Saturday's a table is usually a certainty. 

Ambience – Dimly lit and horribly bleak in the inside section but the outside section is nice when the weather is kind.

Unique Plus Point – None really unless you work in media. In which case you'll meet a lot of your own.

Rating – 2 out of 5 Beers

If you wanted to kill the advertising fraternity, as I’m sure many of you do, you need only poison the food and drink supply of Madira Bar. This place is populated by the crème de la crème of Grey, Leo Burnett and McCann and hosts ad folks in their hundreds over the course of a Friday night. So if you should poison the joint you’ll knock out a big chunk of the Parel based ad fraternity and knock over a pretty decent collection of MTV folk as well. All in all I’d say that counts as a social service.

But all talk of killing ad men and Roadies aside, Madira is a fairly OK joint. It is however as dimly lit as a crypt and is a bit of an electrical hazard (A table fan once short circuited, the whole place went dark and all the ad-men howled like little girls over all the sparks) There’s also the monsoons at which time the whole damn place looks like it’s going to collapse under the rain water. But the beer and hard liquor is fairly inexpensive and if you’re in advertising I’d definitely recommend it just so you can run into 50 people you know and have a blast across tables. I’d also recommend quitting your current job and doing something more honourable such as prostitution and/or drug dealing but that’s just me.

Now if you aren’t in advertising, here’s what to expect – Madira is a small joint but has both outside and inside seating which means when the weather is nice, this place is awesome. However, the inside section never seems the most hospitable and is lit with a mixture of red and yellow lights which sometimes resemble puke, if puke could light a room. On the bright side though (excuse the pun), it has quite excellent food and you could easily pound down a proper dinner here. It’s also the kind of place that girls frequent so you can always bring the ladies around for a drink.

My recommendation would be to sit yourself outside, grab some Chinese starters and drink up. 

The Miracles of Gin

Bar - Akshay Bar

Location – Parel East. Behind the ITC Hotel and next to the Pet hospital.

Size – Medium sized joint.

Place – You’ll get a place most of the time but Saturday’s are a bit of a wait.

Ambience – Air conditioned and bright with comfortable sofas and great service.

Unique Plus Point – FREE CHEEZLINGS (I cannot emphasize how amazing this is in a world with no free chakna anywhere)

Rating – 4 out of 5 Beers

Yes my drink is Gin. I mix it with soda, squeeze some lime in it and enjoy it for the mildly alcoholic, zero hangover in the morning version of fresh lime soda that it is. You can make fun of me all you want for this over a drinking session, but come the next day you’ll be barfing and holding your head whilst I will hop over for a morning stroll and maybe grab a donut.

Gin is also inexplicably cheap, so cheap in fact that it’s almost always the cheapest drink on the menu and this is always a fantastic thing. You can get a Gin quarter for, at times, 50 bucks cheaper than a Royal Stag and gin tastes a boat load better than any of the cheaper whiskeys. Also you can drink a boat load of it before your tongue starts to taste like fart. Now one of the premier places to have Gin is Akshay Bar, a cozy little spot I discovered thanks to Varun J.

It’s premier because it really looks like a spot that should be way more expensive than it actually is and has service and comfortable sofas the likes of which I’m not even accustomed to at home. And it’s the gin hub because a quarter costs Rs.150. Yes, a quarter of gin in an air conditioned place with free chakna and great service and an LCD costs 40 bucks more than it would cost you in a wine shop.

When I first heard this I did a backflip. I didn’t even know I could do a backflip and as such I credit Akshay as a place that also gives you superpowers that you were previously unaware of. Upon arrival I was greeted by a most friendly German Shepard (a dog, not an actual German sheep herder of some sort) and the sort of service usually associated with four figure bills.

This place however, is ridiculously light on the pocket for the sort of spot that it is. For example, a beer will set you back 170 and a Royal Stag will cut about 210 out of your wallet. And the crowd is pretty decent as well, I mean once in a while you’ll find a group of advertisers in there, but that’s about as bad as the situation gets. Not too sure about bringing a girl in though but I’ve seen more than a few agency chicks spending their Friday night at this fine establishment.

All in all a hell of a place and a great spot to knock down some cheap booze.