A teahouse for Fort’s legals

A glass door wearing a white paper cutout of a teapot is something you would easily miss in the commercial rut at Fort. Step in and you enter a Parsi café that has since its opening a year ago become the default hangout for legals from nearby offices.

The homely and laidback Teapot Café, run by 23-year-old Delna Palia, the owner-cum-chef, is a retreat from the busyness and takes you back to the 70s.

Its interiors are designed to help you unwind — a comfortable aqua couch in a corner, a deck of playing cards on each table and retro music that slowly grows on you. Palia says that people actually come here for a game of cards on a tea/coffee break as a trusty, portable stereo plays classic rock numbers.

This space earlier served as Palia’s father’s office, which she though perfect for her new venture. Her mother contributed the many beautiful teapots that adorn the shelves of the café. “My mother loves painting. She bought these teapots, painted them and wrote the word teapot on each of them. That’s where the name of the café comes from,” says Palia, a tea lover.

The café is fairly popular among the office crowd because of its reasonable prices. A majority of her clients are lawyers. “This place is convenient for lawyers as the court and many law firms are located in the proximity,” she adds. “Many office-goers come in for lunch; they generally don’t have much time to relish their meal. At times they call for their bill while they are still eating. So why should I charge them heavily when they don’t have time for anything more than a quick bite,” she says.

If business should be conducted over tea, you can rent the café’s ‘arbitration room’, which can be booked by the lawyers for out-of-court settlements. What was earlier a store room that Palia converted into an arbitration room on the suggestion of one of the lawyers who had come in for lunch, now fetches her a rent of Rs3,000 a day.

If the lawyers need their quiet time, the youngsters love to laze around on the couch. “I love this place, the couch and the ambience — everything reminds me of the Central Park Café that we used to see in the popular sitcom, Friends. And what makes it even more special is that every food item on the menu is so reasonably priced,” says Ujjwal Kanodia, a student.

Palia is firmly against the culture of exorbitantly priced coffee. “I really don’t understand paying Rs170 or more for coffee when a litre of milk and a bottle of coffee wouldn’t cost that much,” she says.

Delna is currently planning to expand her café to another floor, and then she plans to open another branch in South Mumbai.