Sly Granny - Khan Market

As so many restaurants take the spare, pale, Scandinavian-chic route, it’s refreshing to see one that embraces quirk. Khan Market’s snug Sly Granny is smaller than the Bengaluru restaurant, which sprawls across several floors and rooms, and is slightly more restrained in feel. The invented backstory is that the place belongs to a quirky grandma whose house hides a bevy of secrets–a cocktail cabinet full of rather alcoholic home remedies, a kitchen with recipes collected from her globetrotting adventures, and a haphazard collection of paintings and photographs.

Upstairs, the bar area is smaller, with fewer tables; it converts to a cocktail “parlour” in the evening. The cocktails run from refreshing (the Brixton Smash with vodka, elderflower, white grapes, basil and thyme) to the almost medicinal (the Penicillin, with whiskey, honey-ginger syrup and orange juice). Other standouts look to be the coconut-fat-washed Scotch-based Chase & Status and a Breakfast Bramble with gin, blackberry and yoghurt. There are also sangrias, Pimm’s cups, and dressed-up gin-and-tonics with cucumber, juniper berries, peppercorns and herbs). For now, the mocktails show a heavy hand with the sugar, but that’s easily remedied.