Review: Noon, the new restaurant in Mumbai’s BKC

Naturally lacquered, off-white channapatna beads float as a centrepiece from the ceiling at Noon, designed by Ashiesh Shah.

Tucked away in a shiny glass building in Mumbai’s central business district of Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC), Noon is the first ingredient-forward restaurant in the neighbourhood.

Launched by Vanika Choudhary of Sequel, the organic, farm-to-table café chain, Noon refers to the Kashmiri word for salt and not the time of day.

Choudhary is Kashmiri by birth. When she was pregnant during the lockdown, she craved home food. It wasn’t long before Choudhary’s cravings fructified into a restaurant that doesn’t just doff its hat to her heritage, but also celebrates organic ingredients from across the country.

Vanika Choudhary

Noon’s driving force is its seasonal, organic produce. Much of this is sourced from their greenhouse in Offerings, a farm on the outskirts of Mumbai. The rest of the produce is sourced from Kisano and other farmer collectives in Nashik and Mahabaleshwar. The result is a kind of elevated Indian cuisine that your non-Indian business associate or friend would appreciate without weeping and turning red in the face because the spice levels are so high.

While Noon is a philosophical extension of Sequel that first opened its doors in Bandra in 2016 before expanding to other parts of the city, it’s also part of a trend of ingredient-forward restaurants that is slowly but surely catching up in the city.

It’s restaurants such as these – Masque, the granddaddy of this trend, Ekaa, that opened in December last year, and now Noon – that are reimagining what Indian cuisine could be, by simply putting ingredients first.

And so, you have sprouted finger millet tacos served with tiger prawns, buckwheat tartlets with yellow beets, chèvre, and black garlic or even rainbow trout served with tepache-glazed carrots and Amaranth Hollandaise.

Noon’s version of Choudhary’s favourite Kashmiri Gucchi Pulao is made using shiitake mushroom, kolam rice and the Maharashtrian goda masala.

Rainbow Trout.

We were also served tiger prawns simmered on charcoal and purple corn tortillas with habanero, heirloom tomato salsa, purple turtle beans, jicama salsa and pickled white onion and serrano pepper.

This ingredient-first approach is carried forward into the cocktails too. For our first drink, kale and sweet basil juice, is mixed up with vodka, clarified with milk and balanced with citrus and raw sugar.

Clarified orange, pineapple, and lime juice with aromatic bitters bring out the peaty flavour of the whisky in a cocktail named simply as Number 1. Kehwa, of course, makes an appearance on the cocktail menu - in the form of a gin and tonic cocktail.

Saffron kehwa at Noon

The bar itself is understated, unlike several restaurant bars whose harsh lights tend to kill the vibe. This is true of the rest of the restaurant too. Designed by Ashiesh Shah, the space is warm and welcoming. The naturally lacquered, off-white channapatna beads float as a centrepiece from the ceiling. You could be forgiven for mistaking Noon as a living room of a (very wealthy) friend with great taste. Which is what Choudhary says she’s aiming for. The idea is that you could walk in over here for a quiet business lunch, suited up, but also for a late-night coffee in your Birkenstocks.

Black Rice Gyoza.

In doing that, Noon succeeds. Of course, the food is Indian and so the flavours aren’t alien. It may not remind you home, but it is, for the want of a better word, comforting. And it would certainly make you wonder if it’s the kind of meal you would’ve had if you’d given it all up and retired in the hills.

Meal for two at Noon will set you back by about ₹3,000 without cocktails and about ₹6,000 with cocktails.