Recently on a trip to Bangalore I visited Cafe Saanchi. I ended up visiting it twice over 5 days with different friends. The owner was a cheerful Paarsi or Farsi. (I am not sure I heard him correctly) He had a handlebar mustache. He offered to help us discover what all they had on offer. The cafe is above a antique furniture shop and the antique part is pretty much all around the cafe too.
The food is good and if you ever visit, don’t forget to try the tea there. Especially the saffron tea.
I have come to the conclusion that franchise food joints, while great for scale and uniformity — are really with no personality. The quirkiness of the owner telling us, why would we be interested in ordering too much food? Or a small paper notice put up on a cupboard claiming that the charges for opening a laptop here are ₹500 (an obviously silly thing)
Franchise establishments do try to bring the fun element in some synthetic repetitive manner. A checklist that does everything but leaves out something. There is something lost, some say personal touch, some call it ownership. I will simply say quirkiness that is delightful.
I think this Quirky Authenticity vs Happy Syntheticity is true for people too. I rather meet people who are delightfully forgetful, thoughtful and flawed than ones who hit a nice regular and familiar cadence in their personality.
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