Between the 1900s and the 1960s, Irani cafes opened across Pune, Mumbai, and Hyderabad — brought by Zoroastrian (Parsi) immigrants from Iran and Iraq who established these combination bakery-teahouse-social clubs in the commercial hearts of India's growing cities. At their peak, Pune had over 400 Irani cafes. Today, fewer than 25 remain.
What survives is worth making a trip for.
What is an Irani Cafe?
The Irani café is defined by its furniture, its menu, and its atmosphere — not its location or ownership. The furniture is invariably bentwood chairs and small marble-topped tables (sometimes replaced by formica after the originals wore out). The menu is invariable: chai, bun maska (white bread roll with excessive butter), keema pav (minced meat with bread), and perhaps an egg preparation. The atmosphere is invariably unhurried.
You are not rushed in an Irani café. Tables are not turned. The owner may or may not acknowledge your presence initially. This is not rudeness — it is the original hospitality of a culture that believed the customer would stay as long as they needed to.
Vohuman Café: The Cathedral
Vohuman Café on Dhole Patil Road is the most famous Irani café in Pune and arguably in India. It opens at 6.30am and closes at 11am — morning hours only, by choice, because the family has decided that the afternoon crowd is not their crowd. The bun maska here is architectural: the butter quantity exceeds any reasonable definition of a spread and approaches the sculptural.
The chai at Vohuman is brewed in the slow double-vessel method, the milk separately warmed and combined to order. It arrives in a small glass with a separate vessel of additional hot water — the Irani café's acknowledgement that you might want to adjust the strength yourself.
Kayani Bakery: The Shrine
Kayani Bakery (1955) is more bakery than café but its Osmania biscuits and Shrewsbury biscuits (a Pune speciality — a buttery, crumbly shortbread with a faint citrus note) are essential accompaniments to the café experience across the city. The queue outside Kayani before it opens is a Pune institution.
Dorabjee's and the Boulevard Tradition
Dorabjee's in Camp (the British-era cantonment area of Pune, now a tree-lined commercial neighbourhood) has been operating in some form since 1878. The current incarnation is more grocery store and deli than café, but the small seating area at the back still serves chai and biscuits in the old style.
The Camp area as a whole — Moledina Road, East Street, Mahatma Gandhi Road — retains the most intact concentration of Irani café culture. A morning walk from one to the next, pausing for a cutting chai and bun maska at each, is one of the great urban food walks in India.
“📍 West IndiaEvery time an Irani café closes in Pune, something is lost that cannot be recreated from scratch. The patina on the marble, the grumpiness of the owner, the particular way the chairs scrape — these are not design choices. They are decades.