Ammakai by Bastian Hospitality Brings Mangalorean Home Cooking to Bandra

Bastian Hospitality, led by founder Ranjit Bindra, expands its culinary portfolio with the launch of Ammakai, an all-day dining South Indian restaurant in Bandra that celebrates the warmth and comfort of home-style cooking. Inspired by the idea of Ammakai, meaning Mom’s Hand, the restaurant draws from the rich culinary traditions of Mangalorean households, where recipes are guided by memory, instinct, and love rather than written rules. Ammakai is also among the few South Indian restaurants to serve matcha alongside traditional preparations, offering a contemporary dining experience.

Photo credits: Bastian Hospitality

Ammakai is led by chefs from southern India with years of experience, who travelled to villages in Mangalore to learn recipes directly from home kitchens. The focus is on presenting Mangalorean cuisine in a way that feels refined and relevant while staying true to its roots, highlighting coastal flavours defined by coconut, tamarind, and spices. Rather than reinventing the food, the menu reveals the depth of the cuisine through thoughtful, modern touches.

Guests are encouraged to eat with their hands and discover lesser-known regional dishes, while a few Bastian classics have been retained due to the emotional significance of the space. With modern branding but a contemporary take on southern flavours, Ammakai offers a warm, personal dining experience inspired by the hospitality of the southern coast. Designed as an all-day dining space, the restaurant is also consciously priced to be accessible and inclusive, making it a place guests can visit often, not just for special occasions.

Talking about the Ammakai, Mr Ranjit Bindra, Founder and CEO of Bastian Hospitality, shares, “Ammakai reflects the kind of food and hospitality we have always believed in at Bastian Hospitality: comfort-led, honest, and rooted in familiar flavours. What sets Ammakai apart is its approach to South Indian cuisine, where the focus is on specific regional traditions rather than a broad, generic menu. The food is guided by home-style techniques, instinctive cooking, and flavours that come from lived experience. It’s a natural extension of how we build our restaurants, creating spaces that feel welcoming and food that people can return to time and again.”

For Bastian Hospitality, building restaurants has never been about creating standalone destinations. It’s about building community spaces where people from different generations come together, where meals feel familiar yet special, and where food becomes a shared language. The space mirrors this philosophy. Warm, coastal, and quietly sophisticated, Ammakai feels like a place you want to return to.

The signature dishes anchor the menu and tell their own stories. The Mutton Khara Boti is bold and rustic, layered with traditional Mangalorean spice blends that deliver depth and heat in every bite. In contrast, the Coastal Stew is delicate and soulful, a comforting bowl that captures the gentler side of coastal cooking. The family-style Ammakai Dosa, simple and deeply reassuring, brings everyone to the table, embodying the restaurant’s ethos of shared meals and togetherness.

With Ammakai, Bastian Hospitality continues to evolve as a multi-cuisine hospitality group, guided by founder Ranjit Bindra’s vision of creating spaces that are as emotionally resonant as they are culinary-driven. More than just a restaurant, Ammakai is a reminder that the best meals are the ones that feel like home, and that in Bandra, that home now has a new address.