Google: 4.3 · 73 reviews
Restaurateurs Aditi and Aditya Dugar have helped shape contemporary Indian dining through their much-lauded fine dining restaurant, Masque. Just a stone’s throw away is the new Paradox—a modern Indian bar that riffs on Mumbai’s Art Deco legacy, with mixologist Ankush Gamre’s fingerprints all over it. After earning his chops behind the bar at Masque (where he currently oversees the drinks program) by pouring some of the most avant-garde cocktails in the city, the Dugars decided to give him his own playground. This new space is split into an intimate dining room below and a bar above. Designer Ashiesh Shah’s interior layers hand-embroidered textiles, deep green leather walls, and a beaded quadriptych into a distinctly subcontinental decadence. Gamre’s audacious but methodical cocktails form the heart of the experience. Named after H.P. Lovecraft’s tentacled fictional creature, Cthulhu folds tequila with squid ink, pandan, and citrus, while Sip Your Greens blends roasted tomato, celery, and kachri (a wild cucumber) with blanco tequila. Garnishes are as bold: Think shishito peppers filled with lemon gel or miniature ice cream cones crowned with butter-popcorn gel and crackling candy. In the kitchen, chef Varun Totlani revels in a more playful approach to food outside the tasting-menu format. He sends out everything from caviar-topped Brazilian cheese bread and mud crab finished with crisp boondi (fried chickpea pearls) to charred snap peas with winter sorghum, and even a staff-meal fried rice. Distinctly Indian ingredients from Rajasthan to Ladakh thread through the menu, making Paradox a creative expression of how India wants to eat and drink today. —Karina Acharya
Discover on Pearl
Restaurateurs Aditi and Aditya Dugar have helped shape contemporary Indian dining through their much-lauded fine dining restaurant, Masque. Just a stone’s throw away is the new Paradox—a modern Indian bar that riffs on Mumbai’s Art Deco legacy, with mixologist Ankush Gamre’s fingerprints all over it. After earning his chops behind the bar at Masque (where he currently oversees the drinks program) by pouring some of the most avant-garde cocktails in the city, the Dugars decided to give him his own playground. This new space is split into an intimate dining room below and a bar above.
Designer Ashiesh Shah’s interior layers hand-embroidered textiles, deep green leather walls, and a beaded quadriptych into a distinctly subcontinental decadence. Gamre’s audacious but methodical cocktails form the heart of the experience. Named after H.P.
Lovecraft’s tentacled fictional creature, Cthulhu folds tequila with squid ink, pandan, and citrus, while Sip Your Greens blends roasted tomato, celery, and kachri (a wild cucumber) with blanco tequila. Garnishes are as bold: Think shishito peppers filled with lemon gel or miniature ice cream cones crowned with butter-popcorn gel and crackling candy. In the kitchen, chef Varun Totlani revels in a more playful approach to food outside the tasting-menu format. He sends out everything from caviar-topped Brazilian cheese bread and mud crab finished with crisp boondi (fried chickpea pearls) to charred snap peas with winter sorghum, and even a staff-meal fried rice.
Distinctly Indian ingredients from Rajasthan to Ladakh thread through the menu, making Paradox a creative expression of how India wants to eat and drink today.
