Benne There, Done That

After a long evening of cricket coaching in Bengaluru, Akhil Iyer, then a teenager, would make his way to a darshini—the city’s quintessential quick-service eateries. He would order a benne dosa, its golden surface glistening with butter, crisp enough to crackle from outside while the inside stays as soft as melting butter. For Shriya Narayan, who grew up in South Bengaluru, it was the fragrance of the darshini that lingered. The warm, fermented aroma of dosa batter, the sizzle of the tawa, the perfume of butter hitting a hot griddle—all became vivid childhood memories. After the couple married and moved to Mumbai for work, homesickness often arrived as a craving for benne dosa.

That craving became Benne, which the couple launched in Mumbai in 2024. At its heart is the Bengaluru-style benne dosa. The restaurant serves Bengaluru-style South Indian food, offering an alternative to the more ubiquitous Tamil and Udupi styles. It is both an ode to Bengaluru’s darshinis and a contemporary interpretation of them. With its fifth outlet now coming in Gurugram, Benne retains one of the darshini’s defining quirks: standing community tables. “Our idea is to deliver comfort within the true darshini experience. Such a setting allows people to engage with others,” says Iyer, now 38.

For the couple, recreating that particular dosa had been simmering for years. Their home became an experimental kitchen. “While trying to recreate the authentic recipe, we made and ate some horrible dosas,” Iyer says, laughing. “Our home used to smell of fermentation.” Narayan, 33, adds, “We had tasted so much that I used to say my body is not 70 per cent water but chutney.”

Failure was part of the process. They would approach the tawa with a carefully prepared batter, only to watch the dosa spread incorrectly, brown unevenly or emerge with the wrong texture. “We would put the batter on the tawa with a lot of hope, but it would end up looking nothing like the benne dosa,” says Iyer.

For the couple, building Benne was itself an exercise in starting from scratch. Neither came from the food industry. Narayan was a counselling psychologist, while Iyer ran an advertising production house. “It was a process of exploration and experimentation. From conversations with chefs to going with brokers to see potential sites—it felt like searching in the dark,” says Iyer.

The business gained another kind of momentum when Benne’s Delhi outlet opened earlier this year. Reels of patrons queuing outside began circulating on Instagram. “I thought Benne would just be a small, cozy cafe, but it is gratifying to see people talking about the benne dosa in places like Varanasi and as far as Amsterdam,” Iyer says. He sees potential in Rajasthan and Gujarat, as well as Kolkata and Hyderabad. Bengaluru, intriguingly, is not at the top of the list. “Bengaluru already has access to good dosa, it doesn’t really need us,” he says.