PROJECT PERIOD: Jan 2025 – April 2025
Gaijin isn’t just a restaurant—it’s a feeling. It’s the moment you step into a foreign city and everything feels unfamiliar, yet electric. Translating to “outsider” in Japanese, Gaijin embraces its name with pride, reinterpreting Japanese cuisine through the lens of an Indian chef with reverence and rebellion. The food is a bold homage—refined, flavour-forward, and fiercely original. The beverage program is equally exploratory, blending Japanese ingredients with global spirits and storytelling in every sip. The interiors are sharp, moody, and unexpected—a collision of Tokyo back alleys and brutalist elegance. And the sound? Oh, the sound. A vinyl-led music station pumps curated sets through custom analogue speakers that make every night feel like a Tokyo afterparty.
At the heart of Gaijin is its food philosophy—one that honours Japanese technique but refuses to follow the rulebook. The menu invites freeform grazing: cold plates, small plates (veg and non-veg), nigiri, gunkan, maki, mains, and desserts—each dish a reimagination of something familiar, seen through an entirely new lens. Highlights include the Lamb Ribs (cooked to perfection), Not Buff Carpaccio with bone marrow and tartar, Cherry Wood Smoked Himalayan Trout, Crispy Kataifi Scallop, and Truffle Corn Gunkan—an explosive mouthful of smoked corn, miso, and spicy rayu, wrapped in nori and takuan.
The vegetarian selection is anything but an afterthought. Think Spinach Cream Cheese Gyoza drizzled in a kimchi beurre blanc, Shimeji Mushroom Gyoza Tostada topped with roasted bell pepper goma and chive sesame pesto, and the dramatic White and Green Asparagus with smoked cauliflower purée, silgochu and Belper Knolle—made even more decadent with freshly shaved truffle. There’s also a Grilled Zucchini stuffed into slow-roasted eggplant with a fiery corn koji hot sauce and crispy kataifi for texture, and the Spicy Tofu and Leek Temaki—a nori taco of sorts, layered with braised leeks, cucumber and pickled ginger that manages to be light, punchy, and utterly addictive.
And that’s just the beginning. Other notables include the decadent Crab Udon Noodles with yuzu kosho butter, crab foam and chili oil (optional); the umami-rich Bone Marrow with ginger scallion slaw and cashew miso glaze; Pork & Clam Gyoza Tostada with peach kimchi espuma and black garlic water chestnut emulsion; and the indulgent Tenderloin Katsu vs Yaki—complete with foie gras, braised oxtail croquette, and shaved truffle for good measure. It’s comfort food for the cosmopolitan, with an edge.
The Banoffee layers coffee namelaka, lime panna cotta, roasted banana brûlée, and miso white chocolate on a pecan crunch, served with chocolate-orange ice cream. The Brie Cheesecake brings a savoury-sweet twist with truffle brie, wasabi sesame crackers, and pink peppercorn honey—made even more decadent with fresh truffle. Think of it like spreading cheese on a cracker, only mildly sweeter. The Mandarin is a visual and flavour delight, shaped like a real fruit and finished with edible dew drops, combining Cointreau-spiked citrus, cream cheese mousse, and pistachio chocolate streusel. The Yuzu, meanwhile, is a textural dream—sake curd, crispy gyoza sheets, ginger ice cream, white chocolate ganache, and candied yuzu dust.
The cocktail menu is a storybook of sensory adventure—part illustrated dreamscape, part textured drinking guide, written by a Gaijin. Each cocktail is clever, complex, and wildly creative. Start with the Kombu Breeze, a sea-kissed ode to the Garibaldi with kombu mezcal and fluffy spearmint air. The Sakura Sunset is tropical and playful, while Mt. Fuji is crisp, floral, and cut with clarity. It also comes with a theatrical tableside moment—ice chipped to reveal a bottle within, offering two pours from one cocktail. It’s our homage to the joy of discovery, much like the In a Pickle, a briny, bold blend of Don Julio Blanco, fermented cucumber, shiitake brine, and yuzu kosho, served with a crunchy pickled salad. We’re deliberate with how savoury notes show up across the menu—when they do, they arrive with purpose and intent, never as shock value.
Don’t miss the daring Oink Oni—a full-bodied explosion of bacon-washed vodka, caramelized onion rum, clarified yuzu, and a crunchy chicharron. For something more contemplative, Midsummer Ritual offers a quiet moment in a teahouse where earth, fruit, and cup meet in perfect ceremony—guava pisco, green grape, musk melon liqueur, clarified milk, and Sancha tea come layered with matcha tincture and a ceremonial matcha stick. And the Koji-presso reimagines afternoon coffee through a Japanese lens—Bokka cold brew infused with vanilla meets shio koji, ume, and black pepper, rounded by Johnnie Walker Black and topped with chocolate bitters and coffee foam.
Spirited Away, our zero-proof series, is no afterthought—it’s a collection of drinks with just as much story and soul, minus the alcohol. There’s Blue Moon, a floral whisper of lavender and blue pea that feels like meditating with a lone samurai under moonlight. Kyoto Cold Brew is coffee shop meets dessert bar—tiramisu-infused cold brew with house “no ABV” rum and vanilla bubbles. Mule-Tea is a botanical journey laced with licorice, hibiscus, and rootsy warmth—think herbal tea that went on a wild adventure. And Sakura Fizz? It’s springtime in a glass—delicate strawberry and cherry blossom bubbles, like catching petals on the breeze.
Gaijin unfolds across two distinct floors, each with its own energy, yet connected by a shared design language rooted in contrast and discovery. As you enter, you’re welcomed into the main dining room (seats 40)—a sun-drenched expanse by day, filled with greenery, warmth, and movement. At its centre lies a monumental stone, a seven-tonne monolith once fated for fragmentation, now standing still in homage to Suiseki, the Japanese art of appreciating natural stones—moss as forest, stone as mountain, water as perpetual flow. Surrounding this heart: the bar, omakase counter, and listening station, where rare Japanese vinyl spins beneath low brass lighting. The room shifts with time: come nightfall, the volume rises ever so slightly, the light dims, and the atmosphere leans into its sultry side—intimate, electric, and alive with rhythm.
Upstairs, a smaller, more intimate room seats up to 20 (seated) guests, serving as a private dining enclave or an ideal space for those you want to impress—or simply keep close. But it’s the alley beyond that offers the most unexpected departure: a backstreet slice of Tokyo in the middle of Mumbai. Here, steel shutters—graffitied in wild colour—mimic the look of closed shopfronts, each marked with absurdly delightful signage. Translate them and you’ll find names like Lalaji & Samurai, Kirana Katsu, Gulab & Gyoza, and Chowpatty to Shibuya—whimsical mashups that refuse to take themselves seriously. Overhead, neon signages buzz and glow like the streets of Tokyo after dark, casting a surreal glow on the alleyway below. On the opposite wall, a riot of posters reimagine Japanese pop culture colliding with Mumbai’s chaos: Godzilla toppling the Sea Link, a samurai serving pani puri, and more surreal scenarios that feel straight out of a fever dream. It’s irreverent, immersive, and most importantly, it makes you smile. A corner for the curious, a wink to the outsider, and a quiet rebellion wrapped in neon light.
The project is brought to life by a talented group of partners, including Chef Anand Morwani (The Big Zest & Rocketman Pizza), Rohan Mangalorkar (The Big Zest, Rocketman Pizza, Pack-a-Pav), and Karan Gaba (Bokka Coffee, Farmers Cafe, Bombay Salad Co, Tamari). The cocktail menu has been expertly curated by Varun Sudhakar (Bar Consultant) and Nischal Suman (Beverage Manager), and the space design is the work of Spiro Spero.
At Gaijin, every detail serves a purpose: the precise plating, the playful cocktails, the reverberating bassline of a vinyl spinning in the background. It’s a space built for outsiders, for curious minds, for those who find magic in looking at the world—and food—from a different angle. Welcome to the other side of tradition. Welcome to Gaijin.
Rohan Mangalorkar, Chef Anand Morwani, and Karan Gaba
Founders
Some partnerships start with a brief. Ours started without a name.
We first met Varun in 2024, when the three of us were working on an idea that would eventually become Gaijin. For the first few days, we didn’t even tell him what the brand was called. We had the idea, the feeling, the direction — but the name was still somewhere in our heads.
It became a joke between us: “I don’t even know the brand name and I’m already working on the project.”
But that joke actually says a lot about why working with Varun felt so right from the beginning.
He didn’t need a finished brand, a deck or a perfect brief to understand what we were trying to build. He listened, questioned, added to the idea and trusted the process. None of us ever felt like we were trying to convince him of what Gaijin could be. From those very first conversations, there was this feeling that we were going to make something together.
And then came Thailand.
Travelling with Varun was one of the most memorable parts of the journey. We experienced bars together, talked about drinks, hospitality, music, people and all the little things that make a place special. We weren’t just researching cocktails — we were learning how a bar can have a personality, a point of view and a feeling of its own.
That is something Varun understood about Gaijin from very early on.
He never tried to make our bar look or feel like somebody else’s. He understood that we were three people with a very specific idea of what we wanted Gaijin to feel like, and he helped us find that through drinks.
Looking back now, what we value most isn’t just what Bar Bundle brought to our beverage program. It’s the journey we went on together to get there.
From an unnamed idea in 2024, to Thailand, to opening Gaijin, to everything we’ve continued to build since — Varun and the Bar Bundle team have been a genuine part of our story.
And for the three of us, that means a lot.
