This Mumbai brunch spot is the best excuse for a long, leisurely Sunday

Brunch is having an identity crisis. For a long time, brunch meant one thing: eggs Benedict in a room full of people who got there too early or stayed too late, and ordering bottomless mimosas, because a Sunday with nowhere to be felt like it needed to be extended, not enjoyed. Then came the aesthetic phase: brunch as content. The flat lay, the latte art, the acai bowl that was primarily for the grid.

But something is shifting. The brunch menus are opening and experimenting right now, and they are doing something far more interesting. They're asking: why are you here? What do you actually want from a slow morning with people you like?

Otra's brunch menu reads like a chef asking himself that question first.

Chef Alex Sanchez and his partner Mallyeka Watsa built Americano as a restaurant they'd want to eat at themselves. Otra goes further—it's a return to something more personal. As Sanchez writes on the menu: "I have longed to return to the flavours of my youth, to explore my roots as a Puerto Rican. This menu is a celebration of my Latin American heritage. This is my other side."  That's a confession.

The brunch menu carries it through, and it rewards you with unhurried attention that a Sunday table actually demands.

From there, the menu opens up into shared plates. The Burrata with green pipián, muscat grape, and apple, the house ceviche comes with a yuzu and coconut leche de tigre, which is a brighter, more tropical riff on the citrus cure. 

Then there are the tacos, which are made on 100 per cent nixtamalized corn tortillas, ground fresh in-house from a specific variety of corn sourced from Punjab. The process matters more than it sounds: nixtamalization is an ancient Mesoamerican technique that transforms corn at a chemical level, changing its nutrition, its flavour, and its texture. The Chile relleno taco, with its crispy cheese-filled chilli and salsa tatemada, is the vegetarian option that doesn't feel like a concession.

The churro French toast is exactly the kind of thing a brunch menu should get away with. The 'divorced eggs' (a French omelette with Boursin, split between red and green sauce, limited to two per table) is a dish that has a story attached to it.

This is what the best brunch menus do now: they carry a point of view.

Which brings us to what brunch is actually meant for.

There's something about the pace of a late morning meal with the unhurried ordering, the sharing plates, the second coffee, that opens people up in a way dinner rarely does. Brunch is confessional. You're not trying to impress anyone. The guard is down. There is enough time for the conversation to fill the space.

Some questions worth bringing to the table:

'What's something you used to love that you've completely drifted from, and do you miss it?'

'What would your version of a "homecoming dish" be?' 

'When did you last do something that felt more like play than productivity?'

'If you had to describe this year in one dish, what would it be?'

None of these questions requires a therapist. They just require a table full of plates you keep reaching across for, and a restaurant that takes the cooking seriously enough that you don't have to think about anything except the conversation.

Lead image: Otra

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