There is something comforting about returning to the food you grew up eating. A birthday party cutlet with a cashew on top, a jam roll, an onion samosa bought outside a theatre or a plate of hot punugulu with coffee. At Coffee Sangam, these memories are not just part of the menu. They are the starting point of the idea.
For founder T.S. Sampath and partner chef Vignesh Ramachandran, the intention was to create a place that felt familiar, served good coffee and did not get caught up in the growing vocabulary around specialty coffee. The result is a space that is closer to an all-day dining bistro than a conventional café, with a menu that brings together nostalgic favourites, Telugu flavours and a little contemporary imagination.
“When we were contemplating on what to do with the waiting area for Theta Theta Telugu (another restaurant they own), we thought let’s do something with a nice menu that connects with the guests and is nostalgic, something we had as children, but with a bit of a gourmet touch and better presentation,” says Sampath.
That thought led to dishes such as punugulu and Navarang onion samosas, the latter named after a popular theatre in Vijayawada. The menu also features birthday party cutlets, jam rolls, jim-jam cookies and curry puffs, each carrying a memory of a time when eating out was often about simple treats rather than elaborate menus.
Sampath says the team was clear about what it did not want Coffee Sangam to become. “We didn’t want to do a lab kind of set-up or chase all the new trending things happening outside. We wanted to do very good coffee, the best filter coffee and good food. Other places serve good food, but the menus are often generic, with bruschettas, puffs and similar offerings. We wanted to do something more like a bistro.”
For Vignesh, the idea also came from watching coffee culture become increasingly complicated. “Coffee was getting a little too complicated. We wanted to build a place that simplified everything. We didn’t want to talk about the origin, roast or bean. We wanted to be a food place that did great coffee.”
He describes Coffee Sangam as an all-day dining bistro that happens to do good coffee, with filter coffee at the centre of its programme. The team also serves traditional bean-based coffee, but the emphasis is on the cup rather than the story behind it. “We do great coffee, and we do food that pairs well with coffee,” he says.
The food, however, is where the place makes a distinct local connection. Vignesh wanted to challenge the assumption that cafés must serve Western food. “Nobody said coffee pairs only with Western food. We have all grown up drinking tea or coffee with bajjis and pakodas. Avocado toast and truffle fries came in much later. We wanted to bring traditional Telugu flavours into a contemporary format that today’s coffee drinkers and diners would enjoy.”
The idea was also to make familiar snacks feel at home in a café setting. “Just because it is idli or dosa doesn’t mean it belongs in a different space and isn’t cool enough for a café. You can have a cold brew, latte or americano with punugulu and pistachio idli. We wanted to make eating Telugu snacks with your coffee cool.”
The pistachio idli has become one of the restaurant’s bestsellers, along with peri-peri punugulu and the much-loved Ema Datshi Maggi. The omelettes are another popular choice, and Vignesh says the team deliberately moved away from the French-style rolled version. “We wanted to do Indian, brown, caramelised omelettes. These are the eggs we grew up eating, brown on the outside and soft inside. We stuff them with cheese, keema or chicken, and use the Amul cheese used back home. We wanted to go back to the things we knew as children.”
Even the avocado toast has a local interpretation. Instead of following the familiar guacamole route, Vignesh looked at the preparation through the lens of a Telugu roti pachadi. “When you look at guacamole, it is essentially a roti pachadi. If I had used another vegetable, it would have been called roti pachadi. But because it is avocado, it becomes guacamole. So we thought, why not make a roti pachadi out of avocado?”
The preparation uses tamarind pulp and local chillies, bringing a familiar sharpness and heat to the toast. It is a small example of how the kitchen takes a recognisable format and gives it a distinctly Telugu character without making it feel like a traditional tiffin-centre dish.
Other popular choices include French toast, particularly the qubani toast, which Vignesh describes as his tribute to the apricot delight at Spicy Venue. The menu also has onion samosa chana chaat, mokkajonna dahi puri, venne garlic dosa and puri keema. The latter brings together mini puris, minced chicken, salsa and sour cream, almost like a puri taco.
The dosa, too, is treated with a playful approach. “We wanted to do dosa, but we didn’t want it to feel like you were sitting in a tiffin centre with dosa, sambar and chutney. If you can have garlic bread, why not garlic dosa? So we do a chilli garlic dosa with coffee garlic butter, just like you would find on French garlic bread,” he says.
Breakfast has its own changing specials, including pesarattu, while the restaurant also introduces a monthly menu that gives the kitchen room to experiment. One month featured Telugu-style sliders, while this month’s offer is Telugu-inspired momos, which the team calls Tomos. These specials sit alongside the regular menu rather than replacing it.
But if there is one occasion that has become a Coffee Sangam ritual, it is Sunday breakfast. The restaurant serves an indulgent Telugu breakfast exclusively on Sundays, beginning at 7 am with mutton pulao, followed by country chicken with dosa and other dishes. “We do a great indulgent Telugu Sunday breakfast. It is a full non-vegetarian feast on Sunday mornings,” says Vignesh.
For Sampath, the idea of nostalgia is what holds the concept together. It is not simply about recreating old dishes, but about bringing back the feeling associated with them and presenting them in a way that works today. The response, including the interest in the restaurant’s Telugu specials, has encouraged the team to think about taking the concept further. So expansion plans are very much on the cards.
For now, Coffee Sangam seems content with its own uncomplicated proposition: good filter coffee, food that feels familiar and enough imagination to make an old favourite worth returning to. It is a place where a pistachio idli can pair very well with an americano, where a birthday party cutlet can bring back a childhood memory, and where Sunday breakfast is an occasion in itself.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: deccanchronicle.com
