Santa Maria餐厅丨叙利亚德拉

Santa Maria, a new 25-seater restaurant in Bandra is a love letter to its Catholic heritage

Step into Santa Maria, a new restaurant in Bandra run by a trio of friends, that is like a modern museum housing flavour and stories from a gentrified urban village in Maximum city.

No sooner have you passed through the ​​four-lite doors of Santa Maria, a new restaurant in

Bandra

, Mumbai — than you’re whisked off into another world. It’s 4:30 pm and Waroda Road in Ranwar Village is bathed in a powdery yellow. Inside, there’s American pop artiste Colbie Caillat blaring from the speakers; the smell of camphor hits you like a bolt from the blue, before settling, so can you start picking up on the aromas of deli meat and unctuous sauces.

Santa Maria Bandra

Santa Maria Bandra

This is not just another new restaurant within the city’s burgeoning

culinary landscape

. It’s a quiet stance against the rapid gentrification of the neighbourhood, where ages-old homes and bakeries, guarding this city’s Catholic, Goan, and East Indian history are torn down and replaced with upscale cafés, high-street fashion, and jewellery boutiques. But at Santa Maria, the aim is to immortalise the urban village,

Ranwar’s milieu

, while offering a slice of life inside its labyrinthine streets.

The community aspect of the new restaurant in Bandra becomes clearer once you learn that Diego Miranda and Glenice Dsa are two-thirds of the trio behind the quaint sandwich shop — the couple also helms Andheri-based Bambai Nazariya, a café dedicated to empowering-plus-employing trans people. “We always wanted to get everyone together. Because that’s how you live; that’s how a society is built. And it is our strength,” expresses Miranda, speaking of his interest in social entrepreneurship.

Santa Maria Bandra

Santa Maria Bandra

Santa Maria Bandra

Fragments of Bandra’s past come through in the kitschy-cool space that’s a little bit like a menagerie of objects gathered from surrounding homes in the ’90s. Picture rickety tables laid out with red-and-white gingham tablecloths; Rotação chairs brought to life by a local chair weaver in a bid to preserve the art form, traditionally from Benaulim, Goa; and parrot-green walls adorned with makeshift shelves propping up sewing machines and frayed jumbo cassette players. There’s also pillars pasted with cassette covers and ceilings plastered with ‘Madonna Magazine’ an English, Catholic, periodical circulated by the city’s Shrine of Don Bosco’s Madonna that was launched in 1937 by Fr. Aurelius Maschio, its founding-editor. “Some prayers, some jokes… just a write up. And it’s a very nostalgic thing. Everyone from the Catholic background in Mumbai will know about it. Many years back, their granddad or great granddads might have subscribed to it. And you still get it at the same address,” Miranda offers, adding how much of the knick-knacks lending flavour to the space are in fact, sourced from locals’ homes.

Santa Maria Bandra

As it turns out, the third-wheel of this venture, Alcino Lobo, the master-charcutier behind the sandwich shop, drew goodwill and goods, in equal measure. “Alcino is a local. So, all his friends are from the village. When they got to know he’s starting this place, they started getting their things, you know? There’s this guy, they call him Happy. He stays inside the village. He was renovating his house, so he kept a bunch of cassettes, CDs. Oh, and you can see the vintage oven on top? Auntie [Happy’s mother] gave that to us,” Miranda reveals.

Santa Maria Bandra

Ranwar’s residents are immortalised not just in the decor at Santa Maria but also, in its menu. For example, there’s the meaty Ranwar Square, a sea-salt focaccia sandwich piled high with salami, mortadella, pepperoni, and bacon to cue in the multiplicity of the community that gathers each evening at the village’s square. Or, the pesto-draped Markie’s Mortadella: a tribute to a Bandra hero and international Para Badminton Player. “Alcino always says that it’s a complex and patient sandwich just like Markie, because you have to be patient to make mortadella,” Miranda quips.

Other delectables like croissants ensconcing vinegary chorizo and salad-wiches brimming with balsamic that taste like a garden in springtime complete the concise menu at the restaurant, conceptualised by Lobo, who interestingly had nothing to do with hospitality. Miranda has christened him “Phunsukh Wangdu of Ranwar’ — a reference to Amir Khan’s portrayal of the innovator and reformist Sonam Wangchuk in the Bollywood film, 3 Idiots. “He’s from an engineering background. So he’s built smokers for people… he’s like this genius and the heart of this place. Now he’s gone — we’re smoking our bacon right now; he’s rushed there,” Miranda shares, adding that Dsa, too, is an erstwhile engineer, leaving him as the lone hospitality professional.

Santa Maria Bandra

The three crossed paths many moons ago, connecting over their shared love for hotdogs — Miranda and Dsa had a street cart, while Lobo sold sausages, meats and the American sandwich to acquaintances or at flea markets in Bandra. They reunited again last year to build this enchanting restaurant that’s something out of a short story, if anyone was ever to write one on the Indo-Portuguese-Anglo architectural and historical marvel that Ranwar Village is. And the more you learn about it, the more certainly you want to bite into its juicy tale.