Ammakai: A New Karnataka Story Rises In Bandra’s Most Iconic Space

For years, the Bastian Bandra space sat at the crossroads of Mumbai’s dining culture, a place where the city gathered, lingered, and returned to without needing occasion. Now, in a thoughtful turn of narrative, that same space reopens as Ammakai, a Karnataka-inspired all-day dining concept that leans into the kind of comfort that rarely makes it to restaurant menus. This is a revival as much as it is a recalibration: a shift from modern gloss to something gentler, closer to memory, and anchored in the emotional cadence of home cooking.

Ammakai, which translates to “mom’s hand,” captures the food that shapes you before you ever understand cuisine. The aromas that feel like presence, the plates that carry unspoken affection, and the dishes cooked by instinct rather than precision. “Bastian Bandra has always been incredibly lucky for us. Before we say goodbye to the building, we wanted one more year of welcoming our community with something new, while still holding on to what they love,” shares Ranjit Bindra, Founder & CEO, Bastian Hospitality. In giving this philosophy a place of its own, Bastian Hospitality steps into a more intimate phase of its culinary evolution.

The Emotional Architecture Behind The Menu

The food reads like a quiet archive of Karnataka kitchens. It leans into the emotional grammar of the state, the soft thud of dosas made for sharing, the layered warmth of home-style gravies, and the small plates that feel lifted straight from a family table. The team travelled across towns and kitchen counters, learning directly from the women who have preserved these recipes with intuition. What emerges on the plate is not nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake, but a lived-in authenticity shaped by the people who know these flavours best. 

While Ammakai sets out with a clear identity, the space doesn’t sever the ties that built its past. Select Bastian favourites are woven into the menu, an understated nod to the dishes that became Bandra rituals, a reminder that reinvention can hold continuity without contradiction.

A Space Made For Gathering

If the food is rooted in lived memory, the space is built for living in the moment. It is one of Bastian Hospitality’s most community-forward dining rooms to date, the kind where families spread out over slow Sunday lunches, where celebrations dissolve into shared plates, and where solo diners find comfort in something quietly familiar. From morning to night, it holds that elusive quality: a restaurant that feels like home without trying to mimic one. With the building set for redevelopment next year, the choice to reinvent the space now carries a certain poignancy. It allows the essence of Bastian Bandra to stay open for one more chapter, but through a different lens. 

This also marks the start of a broader commitment by Bastian Hospitality to explore South Indian food with depth, respect, and heart. With more locations expected across Mumbai soon, the concept feels less like an experiment and more like the foundation of a new culinary pillar for the group, one shaped by authenticity and emotional resonance rather than trend cycles.

ELLE Gourmet’s Verdict

Ammakai feels like an unexpected but welcome pivot, a reminder that some of the most profound culinary experiences come not from invention but from memory. By foregrounding Karnataka’s home-led flavours within one of Mumbai’s most recognisable dining addresses, the restaurant offers a rare balance of emotion, skill, and simplicity. It is soulful without being sentimental, rooted without being rigid, and familiar without slipping into cliché. In a city that constantly reinvents itself, Ammakai feels like a moment of stillness, a place where food speaks softly, but with conviction.

Where: Kamal Building, B/1, New Linking Road, near Burger King, Bandra West, Mumbai