In Bengaluru, a Brutalist-style bar serves cheese cocktails and the “perfect bun”

The year is 2016 and I’m in grade eleven. My friends and I have been waiting on Bengaluru’s Church Street for 45 minutes, hoping to get a table at a new wood-fire pizza place that’s the size of a shoebox. This is an era before fastest-finger-first reservations hit the city or queueing became cool. Back then, if a restaurant was booked, you just moved on to the next. A line was rare. Mythical, even.

But the lore around Brik Oven made the eatery special from day one. It wasn’t just a pizza place, the whispers said, it was run by two hot brothers. One whipped up thick shakes, while the other kneaded dough, all in an open kitchen for you to watch. The sort of setting you need to shoot a show called Two Hot Guys & A Pizza Place, and just enough detail to get teens like us to spend our weekends swooning in line.

Ten years later, I’m talking to founders Anirudh Nopany and Sreeram Anvesh, only to learn that the tea was false. Well, partly. The good looks remain, but as you can guess from their last names, they’re not brothers. “We actually met for the first time right before Brik Oven opened,” Anvesh tells me. “Maybe the rumours are our fault. We spent 14-odd hours cooped up in a little kitchen and often entertained ourselves by making up these elaborate stories.” From faux trips to Italy, where they apparently learned how to make a wood-fire oven, to silly gags on being siblings, the tales were extensive and hilarious.

In 2026, the duo no longer need little white lies to keep themselves occupied. Brik Oven now has seven outlets around the city, and at the end of March they decided to take their first step beyond pizza with Brine, a cuisine-agnostic bar and restaurant stationed in bustling Indiranagar. “Brine means ‘salt water’, which signifies change. That’s how we see the menu. We just want to experiment with food and drinks without any limitations,” Nopany explains.

From the outside, the bar, shaped like a big box, gives little away. But this suspense makes the entrance all the more thrilling. You push open the heavy door to be greeted by a large open-plan space that blends hints of Miami, Tokyo, and Bengaluru together.

Designed by architects George Seemon and Animesh Nayak, the 120-seater has sky-high ceilings bordered by glass cubes and lit up by soft red lights. The Brutalist feel of the concrete floor and seats is juxtaposed with life-size trees that run across the restaurant. “We were presented with a lofty, industrial structure that needed warmth,” says Nayak. “That’s why we brought in tall trees to bring a sense of intimacy.”

The grey look is softened by a dramatic green entrance wall and a boulder customised into a reception desk. The highlight, though, is their feature bar, which glows with a warm copper hue. “The copper makes the bar the focal point in the otherwise neutral palette. Almost like insects hovering around a warm source of light,” Nayak adds.

He’s right; wherever you’re seated in Brine, it’s hard to look away from the theatre of (and behind) the bar. At our corner table, my plus-one and I are welcomed with a shot of Aperol, Campari and gin, followed by a house-made kimchi and feta amuse bouche. “We keep changing this up because we use these extra courses to try out new flavours and recipes,” Anvesh says, adding that innovation and play is a big part of the charm at Brine for the diners and the makers.

In fact, the mood is so vibes-heavy that my partner, who hasn’t had a sip of alcohol all year, decides to order a cocktail. In a city where XXL breweries and tiny 12-seater bars coexist, this softly lit in-betweener brings a certain je ne sais quoi that makes you want to throw your head back and ease in.

At Brine, the cocktail menu is a bit adventurous, though bar staples are also on offer. I start with Weeds, an umami gin and vermouth drink finished with pungent seaweed. Next up is Cheese, a vodka and lapsang souchong drink with hints of nutty Gruyere. While the first two are delicious, acquired tastes, the High Tea with rum and coconut water is dangerously light. The kind of drink that tastes so refreshing that you forget there’s any alcohol in it.

So, if you follow my lead, make sure you order your nibbles aplenty. I started with the honey toast with Sichuan peppercorn, which was topped with blue cheese and proved quite a hit on our table. Next came the succulent beef tartare with potato pavé and Parmesan, which was wiped off the plate in mere seconds. I also had my eye on the stem salad with bok choy, cabbage and shimeji, but we saved that for next time, and thank the universe because….

….that lead me to the dish I would bat hard for: the buttery, golden miso fettucine. Call me dramatic, but that pasta was a spiritual experience. The flavours are specially concocted by Arjun Joseph Matthew, the head chef at Brine, who moved from Vancouver with Michelin-star experience under his belt. “We keep the black garlic on warm in a rice cooker for nearly a month before using it in the pasta,” he explains, and I can only guess this is the secret ingredient.

According to the restaurant, the Bone in Lamb Belly has been an early crowd favourite, but is a dish that was created by accident in a very Massimo Bottura ‘Oops I Dropped the Lemon Tart’ way. “The butcher sent us the wrong piece of lamb and it was just lying there,” says chef Matthew. “So, I cooked it sous vide for 15 hours, then put it on a robata grill and added charred pineapple. I had no idea it would become the dish that it is today.” This sense of experimental trial and error informs every facet of Brine.

While Anvesh and Nopany are focused on building the empire, Matthew leads the charge in the kitchen with mixologist Harry Simon Peter (of Sanchez and Sriracha fame), who heads the bar programme. And hints of the founders still show up across the menu. “My go-to order is the Duck Tea and the prime rib cheeseburger,” Nopany says. In fact, the burger is part of the reason Brine exists.

Five years ago, the co-founder was playing with bread and made what he calls the “perfect bun”. Knowing it wouldn’t fit into Brik Oven’s pizza-driven identity, he needed to open a restaurant just so the bun could be treated right. I know what you’re thinking and maybe we’ll find out a decade later if this story is inspired fact or fun fiction. But for now, I can confirm that the bun of your dreams awaits you with a choice of halloumi or steak at Brine.

Just make sure you leave some space for dessert. The berries with almond crumble and cream cheese foam expertly slice out the sweet with the tart. If you’re vanilla, the corn ice cream may not be your pick, but it still deserves a bite.

The old-school popcorn-like flavour of dishes at Brine is peak experimental nostalgia, much like the heart of Brine itself. It’s built on Bengaluru’s lasting love for Brik Oven and now thriving because 10 years on the duo has yet again created a restaurant that tests what the city is comfortable with. Back then it was a tiny kitchen with wood-fire pizzas. Today it is a Brutalist bar with miso-rich pasta, and cheese and seaweed cocktails.

Address: Brine, 80 Feet Road, HAL 2nd Stage, New Tippasandra, Bengaluru

Timings: 5 pm to 1 am, Tuesday to Sunday

Meal for two: ₹3,000 + taxes

Reservation: +91 7338537171