Saving the best for the last: Nerlu Cafe, Bangalore

Another beauty from the Cafe Capital of India

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New cafes seem to spring up every other week in the Café Capital of India aka Bangalore. A good friend of mine asked me to try out Nerlu Café which has a different concept and a compelling story standing out from the rest. Located on Crescent Road near Racecourse Road, it gives a fresh perspective to the whole coffee experience.

Nerlu,the Cafe

First, why this name!! Nerlu means shade or shadow or shelter in Kannada, an aspect considered very important when growing coffee. And the cafe gets this message out nicely by highlighting that the Arabica coffee is a shade growing plant and that their coffee shop hopes to be an umbrella for several Indian roasters that don’t have a retail space to sell. Coffee connoisseurs too are always looking to try new roasts and Nerlu saw a nice gap there to launch this gorgeous café.

The Story

To experience these coffees, Nerlu Café has an exploration menu with an evolving list of 7 to 10 coffees that changes every two weeks. Monsoon Malabar was the theme when I checked in for a conversation with Shibani, one of the Co-Founders.

Shibani was a former teacher in an International School before she founded Nerlu Café. While there is good coffee in India (very little is available in cafes though, and these are mostly cafes owned by roasters), a lot of the small & medium roasters end up selling online as they don’t have a retail presence. Being a passionate coffee person herself, she mentioned that Nerlu Cafe acts as a medium for coffee enthusiasts trying to discover unique and flavourful roasts from different roasters and do not have their own coffees.

Also, there is no place else that is a multi-roaster café in Bangalore. Other cafes are usually serving from one roaster. Either they themselves are roasting coffee, or they have a tie-up with an estate or a roaster. Nerlu Café is not bound by any of these affiliations and is open to all roasters: ‘Only Indian please’ for offering & experimenting amazing coffees.

That’s Shibani for you with the backdrop of coffee pouches from various coffee roasters

The Coffees

There are two styles of hot coffees that Nerlu Café serves. The first is a style of coffee which is popular, like an espresso, a cappuccino, a latte or a mocha that is machine-made and mostly milk based! The second is where the real magic happens with their manual brews. I did my tasting session with a pour over menu called ‘Discover Coffees of India’.

I quite liked their ‘Rosette Coffee Lab’ amongst all where I could experience the Earthy tasting notes with a bit of nutty flavour.

All in all, one of the best examples of an amazing café raising the bar with even more amazing coffees from India.

Tasting Session On

With amigo brew crew