This Weekend-Only Supper Club in Mumbai Is Built for Slow Dining and Meaningful Conversations

Lights Out is this month’s theme at Mumbai’s newest supper club, The Find Atelier in Mumbai’s Bandra. The weekend-only setup glows with just candlelight, accentuating the spacious layout’s minimal, cosy décor. Not one flashy, over-stimulating light here, thankfully.

As the big door of this wooden-roof atelier opens, guests are taken back in time of candle-lit dinners, single-page menus in an elegant, cursive font, community tables, long conversations and unrushed service. It makes for a great slow evening to unwind, shake off the week’s stressors and breathe easy.

The vibe is elevated comfort and so is the food. For Lights Out, co-founders and sisters Aalisha and Riona Sable have planned a unique, five-course menu of French and Italian dishes. There is no usual heavy buttery, creamy and cheesy pizza and pasta or risotto here. The fare is refreshingly light on the stomach, flavourful, delicious and delightfully different. “Lights Out is designed to have people walk in on a rainy evening, chill in a candle-lit setting, enjoy comforting food and slow down,” says Aalisha, the sister who manages the décor and hospitality side of the business, putting to use her education in hospitality from Switzerland.

Lights Out is the club’s third offering since they started about two and a half months ago. At this 25-seater supper club, the food and decor changes every month. “I love experimenting with food and didn’t want to run a place, which was very commercial and where I would have to cook the same dishes over and over again,” says Riona, the second half of the club and also its head chef. “We don’t want things to become monotonous for us and our guests,” Aalisha.  

Their first, the housewarming menu had kairi carpaccio, hashbrown, wild mushroom pate and bruleed figs, mascarpone gelato with balsamic caramel and brown butter crumb. Second was Bed in Breakfast for which they laid out spinach and cheese croquette, oyster mushroom pancake served with hot honey, pickled red cabbage and spring onion relish, green yogurt panacotta with house museli and more. The third, Lights Out takes inspiration from a real-life light out situation. It happened during one of the meals. All lights went out due to an electrical error. That’s when The Find Atelier’s team lit up the space with candles. “It made for a cool setting, like the chiaroscuro (the light-dark technique in Italian paintings),” says Aalisha.  

That visual poetry and drama was conceptualised into a full-blown dining experience. The table has a book on art, which has a beverage menu tucked in. There’s red and white wine, beer and a classic sangria mocktail. The classic stick and square candles and the overflowing and hardened wax, taking different shapes and forms, make for an unusual, old-world-charm tablescape, which includes no-fuss plates and bowls in white with notes of earthy brown. 

The meal starts with glass shard, tomato and thyme amuse bouche. True to its name, the shard is wafer thin and almost transparent. It’s a fine example of a superlative cooking technique. Riona has trained in the vocation across Italy and Dublin.  

Next up is crispy, moist, and soft mini-boule bread. You can hear that perfect crunch when you break it. It’s served with a light yet smooth and fluffy sage, pumpkin, and chilli butter. The delish starter is asparagus, beurre blanc, leek ash oil, and garlic croutons.

An additional crisp egg yolk is added to the non-vegetarian dish. The appetiser for non-vegetarians is a Confit duck, fennel, orange, and red wine jus. In the vegetarian version, cabbage replaces the meat. The entrée is both beautiful and scrumptious. The delicate sheet of fazoletti pasta is elegantly laid over slow-cooked eggplant ragu and Parmigiano Reggiano. There is lamb on the non-veg side. 

And now, the hero of the meal, the heavenly, melt-in-your-mouth black forest. It’s a dark chocolate mousse with sour cherry compote to balance the sweetness, topped with sea salt, cocoa nibs, and a thin, crisp chocolate bark. A fellow diner rightfully described it as orgasmic. There is more. The Find Atelier’s signature petit threes. Brie and plum, the softest sea salt caramel toffee, and date canele. 

Each dish here brought out smiles and conversations at the community table. “The cabbage didn’t work for me,” said one of the guests. “But the duck was awesome said another diner.” The banter led to the discovery of common connections, taking the dining experience several notches higher. “That’s what we intend to do. To create stories, experiences, and make conversations through food,” says Aalisha.