Welcome to Café de la Paix
Designer Kunal Merchant on restoring and reinvigorating the Irani cafe’s iconic bentwood chairs.
These iconic chairs are synonymous with the once ubiquitous but now vanishing Irani cafés of Bombay. Café De La Paix, near the Royal Opera House is one of those historic Irani cafés that has weathered the test of time since 1924. Undaunted that it is among a dying breed of establishments, Café De La Paix decided to double down and invest in reinvigorating the space as third-generation owner Gustad Dinshaw Irani hopes to continue to serve their chai and omelette bun for several years to come.
These Irani chairs were designed to be cost effective and mass produced. Contrary to popular assumption, these chairs were not made from cane or bamboo but from teakwood that was bent into shape with a combination of steam and chemical (ammonia) bending. Though it is quite difficult to replicate this process today, one can easily buy an old Irani chair from Chor Bazaar for a good bargain.
Several decades and coats of bad black polish had to be stripped away from these chairs that took about a month to do. As we started sanding away coats, the metaphor of this being an archeological exercise was not lost on me – it was like digging deeper and stripping away layers of time to get back in history. And beneath all those layers, forgotten and waiting for us from so many years ago was this message, ‘Welcome’.
I imagine Irani cafés as some of the first truly democratic and inclusive spaces of Bombay. In the first few decades of the previous century when thousands of immigrants were coming to Bombay, they were still shedding the moral and social burdens of small town and village upbringing.
Class, caste, religion, background determined what you ate, where you ate, who you ate with and who made it. I think that by not asking these questions of its patrons, by being open and ready to serve all – irrespective of their backgrounds – Irani cafes played a pivotal role in the development of Bombay as a true ‘Cosmopolis’, its citizens as individuals and the spirit-life-world of this city. Bombay is synonymous with Irani cafés and Irani cafés are synonymous with these Irani chairs as you’re always ‘Welcome’ no matter what.
Based on the quirky instructions and notice of rules found in many Irani cafes, the stalwart Bombay Poet Nissim Ezekiel in his 1972 poem ‘Irani Restaurant Instructions’ says it best:
Please
Do not spit
Do not sit more
Pay promptly, time is valuable
Do not write letter
Without order refreshment
Do not comb
Hair is spoiling floor
Do not make mischiefs in cabin
Our waiter is reporting
Come again
All are welcome whatever caste
If not satisfied tell us
Otherwise tell others
God is great
This project marks one of my final restorations and has been an amazing way to end this phase of my studio. This particular restoration was part of a larger joint initiative by historian Simin Patel of Bombaywalla and Kala Ghoda Cafe proprietor Farhad Bomanjee to revive Café De La Paix.
Kunal Merchant is a designer based in Bombay. Follow him on Instagram at @kunal.merchant.