The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Now it will just be an avenue of aromatic memories

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Tuesday, Apr 15, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

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Now it will just be an avenue of aromatic memories

Ramya Kannan

City’s first ever coffee shop, a favourite haunt for youths, is set to go into pages of Chennai’s history

— Photo: S. Thanthoni

SHUTTERS DOWN: The door closes on Chennai’s oldest coffee shop, Coffee?, on Wednesday midnight.

CHENNAI: You have roughly 48 hours to get as many cups of coffee as you want from Chennai’s first ever coffee shop. Coffee?, the shop around the cosy corner off Greenways Road, is shutting down.

The shop, and its neighbours on that quiet yard that leads up to the Music College, will likely give way to a multi-storeyed complex soon. With the gong of the midnight bell on Wednesday, Coffee? will be a mere memory. An evocative one at that, for a number of Chennaiites.

The idea of a coffee shop in Chennai seemed as absurd as selling ice to Eskimos when it first came up. The eldest of the three Shah brothers who started the place way back in 1999, Pratik, thought Nirav, his younger brother, now a feted cinematographer, had lost it when he brought up the idea of starting a coffee shop in Madras. “I was like, you want to sell coffee in Madras? No chance!” he recalls.

But they decided to go ahead anyway and in two days flat, they had found a small joint in a place that most people did not know existed: the Music College lane. The youngest brother Bhavesh quit his studies to run the place. Nirav, the impromptu designer, came up with bright oranges and yellow shades for his small shop. His buddies, Prabha and Harsha Koda chipped in, keeping late hours, downing endless cups of coffee.

“We used to download recipes from the net and try them out to see if they would suit the Indian palate. We had no clue how to professionally taste coffee. So we landed up drinking countless cups, remaining bright-eyed until early in the morning,” Harsha reminisces. Why the question mark then? Apart from the obvious invitation to have a cuppa, it also had to do with the uncertainty that they were starting the project with. “Will it work, won’t it? We did not know then,” Pratik says.

But it was obvious within three months that you could indeed sell coffee to Madrasis. Madras has just been introduced to cappuccino, cafe latte, frappes and had fallen for all of it mug, line and sinker. From a hang out joint for just the brothers and their friends, Coffee? soon molted into a happy, happening zone for youngsters — out of school, college, or anyone who wanted a decent place to chill out.

Soon, associations with Gallata.com, Sathyam Cinemas, and young budding film makers firmed up. A couple of movies were also shot on location at Coffee? Fledgling artists exhibited their frames there and moved on to much fame; NGOs sold their merchandise at the counter and men and women met in there and fell in love. For others, it just became a habit.

Like Shyam Shahani, a business man, who was introduced to Coffee? as a schoolboy. By his own admission, he has been going to Coffee? almost every day for the last eight years. “I’m really sad this place is going to shut down. It has been more than a coffee shop for me – I’ve met many of my friends here.”

And just as he says this, Mani, the constant man-behind-the-counter, brings him a tall glass of frothed-up frappe. Shyam takes a sip and in a blissful sigh says, “The cold coffee, that is undoubtedly the best thing here.”

Pratik is hoping to set up shop elsewhere, maybe in Anna Nagar, perhaps by June. But it just won’t be the same again, as yet another of Chennai’s favourite haunts crumbles to rubble.

(With inputs from Ananth Krishnan)

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