A look back at the humble rooms and restless conversations that brewed Delhi’s café culture.

Long before baristas were whisking emerald-green matcha or perfecting six-leaf rosettas, Delhi’s café culture was already quietly brewing — just in a different flavour. Today’s cityscape of soft-lit speciality cafés, Scandinavian wood accents and single-origin menus may feel new, but the desire to gather, linger and talk over a warm cup has deep roots.

The Anti-Aesthetic Icons

In the mid-20th century, when cafés were more functional than fashionable, the Indian Coffee House (ICH) was Delhi’s original third place. With its high ceilings, simple chairs and servers in starched turbans, ICH offered something the city hadn’t quite seen before: a democratic refuge. Poets argued with politicians, students huddled around plates of vegetable cutlets, and journalists scribbled notes between sips of filter coffee.
No latte art, no playlists — just conversation thick enough to rival the coffee.

Where Government Buildings Met Gatherings

A generation later, the Coffee Home on Baba Kharak Singh Marg became a kind of unofficial annexe to Delhi’s offices and colleges. It wasn’t chic. It wasn’t curated. But it was dependable — a sanctuary where you could stretch ₹20 into an entire afternoon. Communal tables turned strangers into co-conspirators. The menu was humble, but the ritual was not.

Canteens That Taught the City to Linger

Delhi University and JNU canteens weren’t cafés, yet they created the habit that cafés would soon capitalize on: the luxury of unhurried time. Over chipped mugs of chai and instant coffee, students learned that sipping and sitting could be an act of expression — or rebellion. Many of today’s café owners grew up in those very canteens, absorbing an ethos that would later influence their own spaces.

The Chain Reaction

Then came the late ’90s and early 2000s — the era that finally connected Delhi to the global café vocabulary. Barista arrived with freshly ground beans, orange branding and the promise of cosmopolitan leisure. Café Coffee Day democratized the idea further, offering cappuccinos within reach of college budgets. Suddenly, “Let’s meet for coffee” wasn’t a luxury; it was a lifestyle.

The New Brew, Built on Old Foundations

Today’s third-wave cafés — with their matcha bowls, cold brews and minimalist counters — may look worlds apart from the sepia-toned coffee houses that preceded them. Yet they exist because those early spaces taught Delhi what a café could be: a conversation pit, a pressure valve, a canvas for ideas.

Delhi didn’t just wake up one day and order a matcha latte. It grew into it — sip by sip, debate by debate, table by communal table. And in every frothy cup poured today, you can still taste the city’s long, quietly simmering café soul.