Irani café

I'm your host, Ambika Anand.

Today we're in conversation with an architect who spent his childhood in and around his father's Irani cafe in Mumbai.

A man who has shaped the way India builds upward from luxury towers to five-star hotels to landmark commercial spaces, the founder and principal architect of ARC, architect Reza Kabul.

Since founding his practice in the year 1988, Reza has grown it from a three-person studio into one of India's largest architectural practices, completing over 3,500 projects in the United States, India, Sri Lanka and beyond.

Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you.

So you grew up in your father's Irani cafe.

You worked there also sometimes.

And it was around these old...

We sort of drew inspiration from these old cafes of South Bombay, the Iranian cafes, and they serve breakfast.

And for us to serve breakfast, I wanted to do that little math in people's head or the logical syllogism which says, this place serves breakfast.

A curry house couldn't possibly serve breakfast.

So in my mind, they're still very much a part of that street experience of eating.

The Irani Cafe is the nearest and dearest to my heart because it's part of my heritage, my last name being Irani.

And Iranis are Zoroastrians that... fled Iran in the 18th and 19th centuries during sort of persecution.

And when they came to India, many of them were sort of the equivalent of a blue-collar worker.

The suspensions reached Country Club in Andheri and Cafe Pakiza in Santa Cruz.

That came on the heels of a festive season drive that suspended thirty licenses statewide, thirteen of them in Mumbai, including Kyani & Company, an Irani cafe that's been serving for a hundred and twenty-two years.

Munde says more than nine hundred licenses have been suspended across food, pharmacies, and cosmetics since he took charge in May.

Indian regulators suspend licenses all the time.