I found more Craft Beer in Mumbai than I found in the others cities we visited: Delhi, Jaipur, Lucknow, Goa. (I know, Goa is not a city. I had the ability to travel north and south from the central city in Goa, Panjim, so I am referring to the area I lived in as Goa.) I had a little insider information in preparation for my quest. Sai Adithya is a lawyer in Mumbai, was at the Lucknum wedding we attended and sent me the following cheat sheet:
Doolally – Kemp’s Corner
TOIT – Lower Parel
Independence Brewery – Andheri West
Gateway Beers at Woodside Inn Colaba
Beer Cafe
Effingut Breworks Linking Road, Bandra
Drink the Simba Stouts and Wit. You’ll usually find this everywhere.
Kings is the local beer in Goa.
I first hung out at Woodside Inn which is only about a quarter mile from the Gateway to India. They have some very interesting appetizers. Three beers from Gateway Brewery are on tap and also thee from Independence Brewery. One night there was an excellent Saison from Independence but it did not appear again. Also an interesting “doppelganger”. It was explained to me that this was their Wit beer but with Rye and a little darker. The beer was very good but limited in selection. The bar has only 5 or so seats but turned out to be an excellent place for me to talk with Whites. The first couple of nights there was a group on their way to Goa. A mother and daughter, each with a man. Another night a German couple. Another night a British engineer working in Abu Dhabi. His interesting line was that he was not going to go back to the UK any time soon. For a beer person, Woodside is a must see, even if it is more for the people than the beer. There are also tables and a seating section upstairs.
The next on my list was Beer Cafe. This is a franchise chain. I had tried their beer at two different establishments near our Delhi hotel in Hauz Kaus. They stock a wonderful selection of Begium botted beers including Delerious and Laffe. I got drinking one of their draft wheats in Mumbai. They do not brew their own, just have a good selection of a few domestic and lots of foreign beers. I have also eater their food. It is a little on the fast food side but a good substitute for dinner when the circumstances create.
Beer Cafe was a little hike from Gateway to India, my hotel zone. It was probably 15 minutes beyond Woodside Inn. The dacore is just modern. The clientele was heavily Indian but a few westerners. In the two Delhi Beer Cafes, I had always sat at the bar. This one in Mumbai was more conducive to sitting at a table.
The third and last of the local beer bars was Effingut Breworks. They are definitely a brewery. I think I first tried their Brown. Their stout, as with most stouts in India, was unexpectedly thin. Then, maybe on my third trip, a Gose appeared! I did not stray from that for the rest of the week. The first time I stopped in was with Mia and Mehul.
My apologies to Mia. Hopefully there are some other pictures of her. In order to brighten up Mehul, I had to put Mia in a glaring light that seems to me to distort her beautiful face.
Very interesting way that they do flights and help the new-to-craft-beer Indian clients pick a beer. The wheel that you see in front of Mia is all samples. No charge. But they do keep coming back and asking which you want to order and if you do order one, they take away the tray, even though some of the beers are not empty. Needless to say, I figured this problem out quickly and made sure all the glasses were empty before being returned.
Good story about finding the bar. I had not yet checked out Sai’s list and was talking to two british couples at the Woodside bar. The one man helped me write down the names of some local bars and restaurants he thought I would enjoy. I wrote down F…ing for Effingut. It seemed a little strange to me that someone would name a bar after Fucking but one never knows. That night I tried to google it and got nothing. Finally when I was looking at Sai’s list, the light bulb went off. I looked in the window earlier in the day, Tuesday November 13, just to be sure I had the right location. And then after a trip to Elephant Island, Mia and Mehul and I stopped in. Only after we were seated did Mehul let on that he does not drink!. Mia and I made up for his abstinence.
Having exhausted by craft beer walking tour, I had to try taking a taxi to Doolally. As I remember there is even more than one but I choose the one closest to Gateway to India. I also was careful to find a landmark in the immediate area so that I did not need to use the name of the bar or the address. The name might be unknown and the addreess was in all likelihood beyond my ability to communicate.
The first rule of using a Taxi in India, or in fact in any new country, is to be sure and negotiate a price before you start. In order to do that, you of course have to communicate, in a fairly easy way, where you want to go. You may have to go to 2-3 taxis to get a price that you are willing to pay. You don’t want to have a 5 minute conversation with each about the destination. So, I want a landmark in the area that is widely known. Turns out that the Doolally that I was after is on Kemps Corner and everyone knows where that is.
I have found that most taxi drivers in India, Cancun, all over the world, are not very comfortable with maps. Of course this is a generalization. Some, especially Uber! drivers, are great. And of course the whole smart phone and GPS instruments have changed the game completely. Now I can follow along as the driver navigates and if we start heading in a wrong direction for too long a time, I can reconfirm where we are going and get a story about why we are taking this direction. Often in India, heading the wrong way was exactly the way to go. In order to get on such and such a highway, you had to come at it from a particular direction, which sometimes involved going the wrong way and then u turning into the right pathway.
Once I detaxied at Kemps Corner, finding Doolally was a 15 minute quest. Not uncommon in India! Th GPS had a firm fix on the location and with a little street crossing and scampering between honking traffic, I was in front of the location. But no sign of Doolally. Back and forth, up and down, the people on the street watch me investiage the book shop and other stores that are present. After refusing help a couple times. One never knows if help is help or just the lead into some game. The helpful man sitting outside the book store communicated to me that the woman pushing her scooter into a doorway a few openings down was where I wanted to be. By the time I got to her, she was gone and again I could see no signs. I walked back around the other side of the corner and asked a man clerking a magazine stand. He confirmed that I need to go in a doorway and then upstairs. Finally I found it. No sign yet. Of course the sign was there, just not something I had seen. But there was a sign for Starbucks so up I went, down the hall and there was Doolally! Unfortunately, closed. Luckily the waiter said it would open in 1/2 hour.
I went out on the street and walked slowly along, stopping often to just watch the street traffic. As I have said, this Kemps Corner was particularly busy. Lots of honking traffic as everywhere. Whenever I need to cross a street, I would pick out a fellow crosser, position myself down traffic from them and go when they went, regardless of any lights or other indication signs. India, we assume thanks to the Brits, is mainly organize by traffic circles instead of traffic lights. Sometimes both. And even with the traffic Lights, it is often hard to discern which stream of cars is controlled by which light.