Restaurateur Rohit Khattar is on a roll. In three months, he has opened as many restaurants at Nilaya Anthology in Peninsula Corporate Park in Mumbai’s Lower Parel. Comorin opened late May with its playful plates from around India. In mid-July, just above Comorin, we got chef David Thompson’s take on rustic, regional Thai food at Fireback. And a few weeks ago, above the soaring, skylit Orangery, Khattar launched Drift Cafe Bar, an all-day spot that diners can, in fact, drift into from Fireback, just past its kitchen show window.
Indeed, Drift does look like an extension of the Thai eatery. The restaurant’s sinuous sculptural cane lighting installation drifts into this space as well, as does the calm warmth in the room’s natural materials and colour palette. A wide bar runs along Drift’s length, its curves and lines bringing to mind the Art Deco windows we pass by on Marine Drive. But its compact size, the feeling of being tucked away, makes Drift a versatile spot to visit, whether with a laptop, a Tinder date, a work wife, or for a team dinner.
Drift has a menu that could not be more different from that of Fireback or even of Comorin. If we worked in the central Mumbai corporate park, Drift is where we would come every single day for lunch in the week that we couldn’t bring our tiffin from home. Chef Sumit Sawardekar’s menu has easy, accessible, satisfying classic dishes done simply and done well. The Drift Omelette, for instance, from its all-day breakfast menu, is a French rolled egg with gruyère and chives, a perfectly pale exterior and a creamy scrambled interior. It is served with straw potatoes and buttered toast. A classic, that’s it. And so it is with the house slaw dog: good bread with a generous chicken frankfurter tucked inside, textbook pico de gallo, slaw, crispy onions, and an jalapeño jam for relish. Same with the fried chicken burger, properly crunchy, brightened with hot honey glaze and pickles inside a milk bun. No flourish, just familiarity.
Drift features sculptural cane lighting, warm natural tones, and an Art Deco-inspired bar
Even when it goes slightly off script in the lunch and dinner menus, Drift’s food does its best to comfort and sate. Take, for example, the not uncommon combination of beetroot-orange-feta-fennel-arugula in salad. At Drift, its headliner is tender gourd: crisp, delicate, subtle, but new enough to make the salad memorable. Who would have thought a vegetable from the turai and lauki family could do that? Or Drift’s blue cheese and goat cheese mille feuille, with slow-cooked tomatoes, kalamata olives, green apple, and hazelnuts; this is a substantial salad stacked in airy pastry form, and it makes a light, unguilty meal. In another bit of a spin, jerk-spiced broccoli comes with miso-coconut cream. It’s gently new but still velvety and gratifying.
