The Busride Design Studio have designed some of India’s trendiest restaurants. What’s their secret?

Brothers Ayaz and Zameer Basrai of The Busride Design Studio have designed some of India’s trendiest restaurants. What’s their secret?

Five-month-old The Bombay Canteen is perhaps the best example of what Mumbai currently considers a hip, intelligent dining-out place. The restaurant sits amid the sterile concrete-and-glass towers in Lower Parel’s Kamala Mills, but its bungalow-like façade and stained glass stick out for all the right reasons. Inside, high ceilings, exposed rafters, patterned Minton tiles and stone plinths reflect the ‘India inspired’ tone of the menu.



Those who’ve visited have found it hard to describe the look using standard phrases. The place evokes a bygone time even as it feels modern, it looks both Indian and international, there’s a solidity as well as lightness to the decor. And yet, there’s no confusion.



"The idea was to create an incomplete structure," explains industrial designer Ayaz Basrai, who, along with his architect brother Zameer, runs The Busride Design Studio, which designed The Bombay Canteen.



"We decided to create a ruin so you feel you are walking amongst old walls and old rooms of a typical Bombay bungalow," says Zameer. Indeed, the interiors look like someone slashed an old villa three feet from the ground.

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