Supa San’s chawanmushi is the most comforting dish to try this monsoon

Was the chawanmushi really that good or was it the deluge making it taste better? Right around the time Supa San opened in BKC with a hot, heady, deeply savoury, and comforting Japanese egg custard on its menu, Mumbai got dark and gloomy. In the days that followed, the city got washed out in a wildly dramatic early-monsoon thunderstorm. Between small spoonfuls of the steamed, delicate, brothy, silken dish, I could not help but think that this custard could not have asked for better weather to make its Mumbai debut. If there is a thing such as chawanmushi weather, this is it. 

Supa San is the latest outing by Aditya Birla New Age Hospitality (ABNAH), which also operates BKC restaurants like CinCin and Nara Thai as well as Ode in Worli. Supa San is being positioned as an izakaya, or ‘stay-drink-place’, the casual post-work spots in Japan where you can grab a drink and some grub. But this is mainly in its philosophy; it takes into account the commercial considerations (read size, prices, and seamless big-biz management) of a Mumbai restaurant group. In Japan, izakayas are tiny spots imbued with the personality of their owners. In this case, the 40-seater Supa San is built around an imaginary ‘super fan’ of manga. To this end, there is a wall of related merch in collaboration with Bandra’s The Comic Book Store, as well as books, figurines, and clothes for the manga-obsessed. 

Suspend disbelief, buy into the construct (or don’t), and be amused by it to focus, instead, on the food and drink, which is well worth your while. Its consulting chef Hideki Hiwatashi is from Hokkaido and has been in India several times in the last couple of years to develop a fun menu with serious flavour that would work for the Mumbai market. (Ask for the piggy bao; it’s a mischievous example of this approach, and the staff takes great delight in its reveal.) Servers come around handing out stickers and magnetic jacket pins. Slim (but not spare) menus read back to front like manga comics, printed with skewed fonts, their sections marked in slashes of black, above pink dish categories. Amply lit food photographs make it look like you could pick bites off the page. 

There are other highlights. Supa San’s spin on nasu dengsaku—miso eggplant to most of us—is scrape-the-plate-clean unmissable. Buttery brinjal cubes are made livelier with jalapeño and fig, and set on a pool of lush, sweet, nutty sauce stippled with crunchy toasted sesame seeds. The team says that their chicken karage is the crunchiest fried chicken in town, and it may well be true. A prawn tempura is not far behind and comes with three flavoured sprinkling salts—togarashi, lemongrass, and curry leaf—significantly benefitting the basic template of the dish. Every bite tastes different. A nigiri platter has five different toppings on as many vinegar-topped mounds of rice, each with a pea-sized dab of condiment matched to its fish. The melting soft torched salmon has ume (pickled plum), kampachi (amberjack) has yuzu kosho gari, and so on. This makes the platter impossible to share. Fans of unagi would do well to add a portion of barbecued eel nigiri topped with chilli miso to their mix. 

At Supa San, recognisable Japanese hits such as sandos, ramen, sukiyaki, sashimi, and more rainy-day essentials (try the crisp-bottomed hearty kamameshi kettle rice) are served with little flourishes of frolic. To match these, in addition to Japanese spirits and a decent spread of sake, shochu, and umeshu, are head mixologist Trisha Koparde’s well-constructed cocktails across three categories. Under Umami Tipples is a boozy malt drink infused with a good glug of miso and soy, clarified with vegan-friendly soy milk and poured tableside from a red-capped curvy Kikkoman bottle. Japanese highballs get a spin under Chu-Hi; vanilla and whey soda make the Calpico taste like ice-cream soda but with a lot more lactic sweetness (think milk powder straight out of the tin!). And cucumber, wasabi, and dill create a clean and fresh-tasting Kappa Picante in the Japanese Pop Culture category.

Even with its winking icon, the glass-fronted Supa San, with its and its panelled walls and mustard and rust upholstery has the sort of clean aesthetic that fits into its BKC surroundings. We could envision the room occupied by neighbourhood suits as well as parents getting lunch before picking up their kids from the many schools in the area. The chawanmushi is really that good, deluge or not. 

Meal for two: ₹4,000 (with alcohol)

Timings: Daily noon to 11:30 pm

Address: Raheja Tower, G Block (next to CinCin), Bandra Kurla Complex, Bandra East, Mumbai 400051

Reservations: +91 70450 29920