Coffee is Bengaluru’s first love during the day. So, what if it is beer during the evenings? A new generation of bartenders is infusing coffee in their cocktails.
Ordering filter coffee comes as second nature to the city, and the ritual is almost muscle memory – a frothy pour from a steel tumbler into the dabara, the first sip that is a mix of happiness and scalding your tongue from the (un)expected heat. Coffee is so intertwined with the city’s daily life that very few think of it as an ingredient, but as an entire culture.
But the bartenders in the city do. When the new breed of bartenders can consider spices as an ingredient, they cannot ignore coffee! With the number of the city’s bars growing, coffee has moved out of the dessert menu and into the centre of a cocktail list. These aren’t just espresso martinis with a local garnish but are based on decoction, cold brew, coffee-infused spirits and the many layered coffee flavours of Karnataka’s estates.
Though Karnataka’s coffee story is rooted in the hills of Chikmagalur, Coorg and Hassan, legend has it that Baba Budan brought seven coffee beans from Yemen and planted them in the Budangiri hills in the 17th century and ever since, coffee has been shaping the state’s economy through its estates and kitchens.
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Why do coffee cocktails in Bengaluru have an edge? Just like a chef would walk to a market to get his fresh produce for the meal he is preparing, a bartender can walk into a roastery to ask about a particular harvest of beans and build an entire drink around the type of bean. Most coffee cocktails are usually around a generic bean; in Bengaluru, however, coffee can have a farm, a grower and a flavour profile – much like single-origin spirits and cocktails based on regional botanicals.
Walk into a bar which doubles up as a café... only in Bengaluru.
Bengaluru is warming to cafés by day and bars by night. At Dual Room in Indiranagar, the bright café serves speciality coffee and matcha from 8 am; after dark, moodier lighting, music and signature cocktails transform the same space.
In Sahakarnagar, Jango follows a similar rhythm: coffee and laptops give way to dinner, cocktails and music. Its founders want people to return throughout the day, with an approachable drinks list easing the transition.
Circa 11, on Indiranagar’s 12th Main, takes the idea further. Its “shapeshifting” dining room brings a morning coffee bar and an evening restaurant and cocktail bar together in one room, with one team.
Together, these three venues blur the line between coffee culture and bar culture and make an all-day café a natural home for a coffee cocktail. In a city built on filter coffee, the cup and the cocktail glass belong to the same conversation.
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Be part of a craft mixology event in Bengaluru – the coffee edit one. If you’d rather shake than sip, Trove Experiences runs a beginner-friendly “Craft of Mixology: Coffee Edit” session at Ishaara on Church Street.
Led by Achintya, a former senior mixologist at The Bombay Canteen, it covers spirits, coffee cocktails, technique and garnishes, and you leave having made a coffee liqueur of your own. Tickets are ₹3,000 and include ingredients and bar nibbles.
Muro has a weekend breakfast club with a coffee-infused cocktail menu, and it includes options like Coffee Pandan for rum drinkers, a Coffee Paloma blended with in-house grapefruit cordial, and an Espresso Martini 2. The bar partnered with planters from Ratnagiri, Balanoor and Devar Khan Estates, and the coffee is roasted by Shravan DS, founder of Beanrove. That’s the closest match to estate-sourced coffee in a bar.
At Copitas, the crowd-favourite Crazy Rich Negroni is a coffee-infused version of the classic, made with leftover banana peel and pandan. It’s a named, award-listed bar with a coffee-infused spirit drink.
Rage Against The Coffee Machine, with cold brew, cardamom and rum. The bar ranked #2 on the 30BestBarsIndia 2024 list and is headed by Arijit Bose.
4. NĀVU
Navu has a new cocktail programme, and it has a “Boozy Coffee” section with an Espresso Martini, Night Shift, Irish Coffee, Barraquito and Last Call, using espresso, cold brew and house-made coffee orgeat.
So then really the steel tumbler and dabara aren’t going anywhere. Neither is the morning ritual of the coffee pour at your favourite Udupi.
What’s evolving is the company coffee keeps: milk and sugar at breakfast, a bartender’s imagination after dark. Bengaluru isn’t trading its first love to make way for the bar - it’s finding another way to tell the same coffee story.
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