{"id":42884,"date":"2026-10-31T15:12:24","date_gmt":"2026-10-31T15:12:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flavorsandsenses.com\/?p=42884"},"modified":"2026-10-31T22:00:44","modified_gmt":"2026-10-31T22:00:44","slug":"papas-the-art-of-hospitality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flavorsandsenses.com\/en\/papas-the-art-of-hospitality\/","title":{"rendered":"Papa’s: the art of hospitality"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A few days before I flew to Bombay, the restaurant sent me a short questionnaire. Some of the questions were curious, a few almost intimate for people who had never met: what I like to drink, what soundtrack I would pick for a Friday night, and others close to philosophical, far removed from anything to do with food. I answered without knowing what they were for, suspecting they would come back to me one day in another form. They did, over dinner: first as a reworked Negroni waiting for me at the bar and, hours later, as the songs each of us had chosen, slipping at random into the house playlist.<\/p>\n

Getting there is an endurance test in itself. Bombay is a city of apparently organised chaos, where the traffic means leaving an hour early for the shortest trip and patience is the first ingredient of any dinner. In Bandra, among the lanes of Ranwar, the queue, the neon and the bright colours outside Veronica’s give away the busiest sandwich shop in town. In the bustle inside, almost no one notices the narrow staircase rising behind the coffee counter. Upstairs is another world: first a red neon sign spelling Papa’s<\/em> over the old Jude’s Bakery board, then a counter and an open kitchen that have nothing to do with the noise downstairs. Hidden inside another restaurant, with no sign on the street and a back-door entrance, Papa’s could be the best-kept speakeasy in Bombay<\/strong>, were it not also the hardest table in town to book.<\/p>\n

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Chef Hussain Shahzad<\/em> and Shivargha Chakravarti<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A bakery in Ranwar<\/h3>\n

Ranwar is one of Bandra’s old villages, in a neighbourhood that was Portuguese until 1739 and still keeps its 16th-century Jesuit churches. For about 80 years, Jude’s Bakery was part of the neighbourhood and of its table, and a few steps away grew up Floyd Cardoz<\/em>, the cook who took Indian food to the top of New York dining with Tabla. Cardoz<\/em>, who died in 2020, was also a founder of Hunger Inc., the group run by Sameer Seth<\/em> and Yash Bhanage<\/em> behind The Bombay Canteen and O Pedro. The team fondly called him Papaji<\/em>. And it was under that name that, when the bakery came free, the group chose to honour him: first with Veronica’s, in 2023, to keep bread at the heart of the building, then with Papa’s, in the attic, in February 2024. The name and the address belong to the man who still shapes the chef and the owners, his story told fondly at the counter without turning the place into a shrine.<\/p>\n

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The cast<\/h3>\n

Papa’s is the epicentre of Hunger Inc., where Hussain Shahzad<\/em>, the group’s executive chef, cooks without preconceived rules. Born in Chennai into a Bohri<\/em> family, to a mother from Patna and a father from Bombay, Hussain<\/em> came the long way round: Oberoi hotels, then Eleven Madison Park in New York, where he gained a new outlook and experience, before joining The Bombay Canteen as sous chef<\/strong>. Our conversations always ended up in Portugal, and for good reason: before opening O Pedro, devoted to Goan and Portuguese cooking, he spent a few months in Goa and Portugal. He ate in our villages, worked in Lisbon taverns and passed through Jos\u00e9 Avillez<\/em>‘s kitchen. Between taverns and kitchens, he learnt the difference between a vinha-d’alhos<\/em> and a vindaloo.<\/p>\n

It is hard for anyone Portuguese not to smile at that, sitting in an attic thousands of kilometres from home.<\/p>\n