Dining is slowly evolving. While grand restaurants exist, the city is making space for another kind of eatery. Earlier this year in August, Abokado opened in Mumbai’s Bandra housing only 12 seats for diners. At a time when most restaurants want to accommodate more people, the avocado and Japanese-inspired dining café is the latest to jump on the bandwagon for micro-dining spaces in Mumbai after Papa’s earlier this year. In the last year, Kari Apla, a restaurant in the same suburb has been the other eatery to sprout in Mumbai. While the first one calls itself a micro-dining space, the latter was a result of soaring real estate prices. With Mumbai’s rapidly changing dining scene, will micro-dining become the future? There is more to it than meets the eye. 

Chef Mitesh Rangras, chef and co-founder of Abokado, has seen a lot of different trends in the last 25 years that he has been a chef and consultant. Wanting to do something for himself, the Mumbai-based chef opened the restaurant but only because he saw the scope for such an experience in the city. He explains, “Bandra is a unique location where people are very open to trying new concepts. They make up their mind based on their own experience and not based on the size or how fancy the place looks. We would not have opened this restaurant in any other location anywhere else in India. Our small size made us think out of the box and try things I wouldn’t have if I had the luxury of space.”