The Afternoon San Francisco Discovered Bengaluru Chef Anurag Arora’s Apartment

Bengaluru’s food map has its usual landmarks with the buzzy new restaurants, chef-driven menus, and the steady stream of places chasing novelty. And then there is Anurag Arora, a quiet man in Indiranagar who turned his apartment into a dining room and built a cult following from the soft light of his own living space. For years, Arora has been that figure in the background, a product designer by day, a cook who hosts strangers by night, plating stories from childhood and travel onto dishes that feel both personal and precise. Apartment dinners have booked out within 40 seconds, with more than 1600 people trying for 24 seats each time. When I moved to Bengaluru two years ago, a friend sent me a screenshot of someone’s Instagram story from an Apartment dinner; since then, we’ve tried our luck at least three times and never made the list. It said everything about how far the word travels. The waitlists built their own momentum. Guests told friends, those friends told cousins in other cities, and the stories travelled faster than the menu did. 

So when he landed in San Francisco for a design assignment, carrying nothing but a suitcase and a menu he had cooked a hundred times, he didn’t expect the city to catch that feeling. But ideas have a way of slipping into the right pockets. Somewhere between the long-haul flight, a walk through Hayes Valley, and a restless night scribbling notes, the thought of doing a walk-in pop-up took hold. A wine bar he loved said yes. Friends and cooks he trusted said yes. His brother booked a flight. A cousin opened their home kitchen. The plan grew legs before he even realised he’d started walking.

On a bright Sunday afternoon, in a city full of restaurants that intimidate most visiting chefs, Arora found himself watching a queue curl around a sunlit block — strangers, regulars, Indians, locals, all waiting to taste a menu born in a Bangalore apartment. At that moment, the gap between his home kitchen and this foreign one didn’t feel wide at all. It felt like the same story, just a different room.

How A Dinner Table Became A Moving City

To understand this pop-up, you have to understand the way Apartment works. Every year, Arora builds a menu that becomes a quiet record of the months that shaped him – dishes refined in the soft light of his Indiranagar home, carried by instinct rather than performance. He cooks it through the year for hundreds of guests, and when the menu settles into its final form, he retires it somewhere far from home. New York last year. Mexico before that. San Francisco this time. Birba in Hayes Valley became the place where this menu would take its last bow. He loved the bar’s energy, the warmth, the ease. Their quick yes set the tone, and suddenly the pieces began to fall together.

Sneha Vacchhaney, who cooks at the Michelin-starred Madcap Marin, stepped into the kitchen. Tanaya Joshiof Sfoglia Club joined, bringing her pasta-making precision. His brother Aashish Aroraflew down as he always does. His long-time collaborator and friend, Kartik Sura, who has handled countless Apartment dinners, happened to be in San Francisco for work and immediately signed up to run the service.

Puneetbecame the unofficial operations manager, quietly solving a dozen problems before they became problems. Nikhil and Monica, his wife’s cousins, opened their home kitchen for two intense prep days before showing up at Birba to taste every dish they had watched take shape. 

The Marin Farmers’ Market Morning

The day before the pop-up, Arora, Vacchhaney, and Aashish took the early morning ferry to Marin County. He has always believed that good produce can shift the mood of a dish, but California took that belief to another dimension. “The rice salad was three times tastier than the Bengaluru version,” he said. “It became a true California dish.” The vegetables, the herbs, the brightness – it all pushed the dish into a place he hadn’t expected. 

The Rush Outside Birba

On the day of the pop-up, he asked Birba for fifteen extra minutes. The kitchen wasn’t ready. At 12:45 pm, his brother leaned in and said a queue was forming outside. By 1 pm, the line turned the corner. In three hours, they served 140 people. Arora didn’t step out of the kitchen; the rush never paused long enough. Inside that rush, one quiet hero kept the machine from collapsing — Jose, the dishwasher sent by Chef Pujan of Rooh SF. “He was the most efficient dishwasher I’ve ever seen,” Arora said. Plates came back clean before the team could even panic. The small touches that followed him from home.

What surprised Arora was how much of Apartment travelled with him. The aprons. The ceviche, which never leaves the menu. The feeling of a room being held together by the right details.

The Afternoon Returned The Gesture

The reassurance that afternoon didn’t just come from the full tables. It came from those who chose to sit at them. Among the diners was Paolo Bicchieri, Audience Editor at Eater, who dropped in after seeing the buzz around the pop-up, and his takeaway became its own kind of affirmation for Anurag: "Arora’s pop-up in Hayes Valley demonstrated the out of town chef’s prowess, the execution of his menu proving his cooking would fit in nicely at any of the fancy pants restaurants in San Francisco. Showcasing creamy beet dips and citrusy rice salads, it’s no wonder Arora is making a name for himself literally around the world.”  

And then there was the moment that still feels unreal to him — a couple who had been following Apartment for years and flew in from Seattle just for the pop-up. “I didn’t know how to react,” Arora said. It remains one of those memories he will never forget, a reminder that the work had travelled ahead of him long before he arrived in San Francisco. Between a critic who came out of curiosity and a longtime follower who crossed a coastline for one meal, the room that day felt less like coincidence and more like quiet proof of something already in motion.

And Then There Were The Flowers

At every Apartment dinner, the mood of the space is shaped by his wife, Jayati Jain, who builds the floral world around the table. In San Francisco, her cousin Karishma took that responsibility and brought in flowers that echoed Jayati’s touch, a quiet gesture that made the pop-up feel less foreign, more familiar. The poster, too, carried a piece of home. Arora always collaborates with an artist for these, hoping to create a visual identity that feels iconic. This time, Ayushi Jain designed the poster, a piece that circulated across Instagram before anyone even tasted the food. It became part of the anticipation, a small prelude to the story he was about to tell. And then there was Kartik, finally taking a breath after service, eating his plate of Apartment ceviche, the dish he jokingly calls his “payment.” It felt like a fitting end to a day built on muscle memory, trust, and a little chaos hidden behind calm faces.  

What The Pop-Up Revealed

What this pop-up revealed had less to do with the numbers and far more to do with what pop-ups quietly make possible. They free food from fixed categories and let a cook carry an idea across borders without turning it into a brand. A pop-up allows a menu to breathe in a new city, to test its voice in an unfamiliar room, and to rely on nothing except the honesty of the plate. It is a space where instinct is allowed to lead, where a dish shaped in one home can find an unexpected echo in another.

For Arora, that afternoon at Birba offered a simple clarity. His food did not depend on geography to feel understood. It belonged in Indiranagar, yet it settled into Hayes Valley with the same ease. It spoke to Indians who recognised its emotional texture and to locals who walked in without reference points but still connected with its warmth. “My audience is usually Indian, so I know how they respond,” he said. “But this time, even people who had never heard of Apartment made sure they told me they loved it.”

Nothing about Arora’s food relies on the charm of being served at home. The setting may be intimate, but the work behind it is deliberate, polished, and held to a standard that could belong anywhere. At Birba, the menu didn’t just survive a new city; it settled into it. Diners who knew Apartment recognised its emotional texture, and locals who walked in without context still connected with its clarity and balance. That afternoon showed what pop-ups quietly offer– a way for food to travel without losing its centre, for a dining room to reappear in another postcode without needing to change its personality. It shaped a room full of strangers into a brief but real community, the kind that forms when a good dish lands at the right moment. And it proved something simple. A home can be portable. A table can belong in more than one place. All it needs is people willing to sit close, share a meal, and let the story on the plate do the rest.

The Pop Up Menu