If there's a queue, it has be ‘benne dosa’
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Benne dosa for ₹99”, reads a board outside Maa Annapurna, a small eatery tucked between coffee shops and snack joints in a residential neighbourhood in Mumbai’s western suburb of Andheri. The menu has the usual idli-vada, chaat and pav bhaji. But the real draw is the benne dosa. With the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan campus a few blocks away, it has, in just a couple of weeks, become a favourite among students and those in nearby PG accommodations.Even as his small eatery clocks over 100 benne dosas daily, owner Animesh Shah says he is perplexed by the long queues at a popular dosa spot in the city.
He had introduced the special price as a limited-time offer for students from 12-6pm last month.The queues are for real, and few know this better than Benne in Bandra. Founded by Akhil Iyer and Shriya Narayan, it popularised the buttery soft and crisp dosa in Mumbai when they opened in 2024. For the duo, it was a way to pay homage to the darshinis, the quick-service vegetarian south Indian restaurants of Bengaluru.
Benne has since then expanded to three more outlets, including two in the city, and one in the Capital. Its self-service kiosk system, where customers place their orders and pay digitally, has transformed the dynamics of quick-service dining. Iyer and Narayan’s simple approach to champion one dish has now created a buzz of a different kind.
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