Maharashtra never repealed prohibition. Under the Bombay Prohibition Act of 1949 every bar here holds a foreign liquor licence and every drinker technically drinks on a personal permit, which is why an honest bar in this city is called a permit room. This road files its petition through Colaba and Fort, and the state's own licence register, the one document that could settle the road's biggest claim, is not public.
- 1 · The Cold Open
Leopold Café
The Jehani family's room on Colaba Causeway opened in 1871 as an Irani wholesale oil and provisions store named for a Belgian king, and it has since been a pharmacy, a general store and at last a cafe and bar, made world famous a second time by Shantaram. The licence and the tourists came later; the spine is older. On 26 November 2008 gunmen fired into the room for about ninety seconds on their way to the Taj, and the house chose to keep the bullet holes in the wall. Reuters reporter Sourav Mishra was among the wounded, and the room reopened within four days. Order a chilled Kingfisher with the mutton dhansak and let the ceiling fans and the witnesses do the rest. Open half past seven in the morning to half past midnight, every day.
a store in 1871; the cafe and the bar came generations later · daily 7.30am till 12.30am · verified Aug 2026
- 2 · The Detour
Café Mondegar
The Yazdegardi family took over the Apollo Hotel's reception room in Metro House in 1932, and the cafe has answered to Mondy's ever since, with Rusi and Hoshang Yazdegardi still the partners at the till. In the 1990s refit the house asked Mario Miranda to paint the walls, and he filled two of them, one with Mumbai and one with the cafe itself, students from the J.J. Institute rendering his canvases at scale. The jukebox, an early one in this city by any account, still argues with the ceiling fans. Draught beer in a heavy mug under those cartoons is the whole assignment; the food is beside the point. Miranda's centenary fell in 2026, and these walls are the liveliest memorial he has. Open 8am to midnight, daily.
est. 1 April 1932 in the Apollo Hotel's reception; Miranda's walls since the 1990s · daily 8am till midnight · verified Aug 2026
- 3 · The Anchor
Trishna
This began in the 1940s as the Matrubhoomi Hindu Lunch Home, a rice plate joint that SV Anchan, up from Mangalore, worked in and then bought. When the building came down for redevelopment the family shut for a year and reopened in 1991 under a Sanskrit name meaning thirst, and Trishna has been Fort's seafood chambers ever since, behind the old Rhythm House corner of Kala Ghoda. Ravi Anchan built the butter pepper garlic crab into a city institution and his son Ruchit now runs the floor. Order the butter garlic crab, tie on the bib without argument, and accept the verdict with a cold beer beside it. The room is the size of a lawyer's office, so book ahead. Lunch noon to 3.30pm, dinner 6 to 11.30pm, daily.
a 1940s lunch home, Trishna only since 1991 · daily noon till 3.30pm and 6pm till 11.30pm · verified Aug 2026
- 4 · The Wildcard
Gokul
A Pujari family canteen from the early 1970s that found its calling when the drink started flowing, Gokul on Tulloch Road is the permit room behind the Taj, wet under the same Bombay Prohibition Act of 1949 that technically makes every drinker in Maharashtra a permit holder. Two floors with the air conditioning upstairs, smoking and non, no decoration worth the name, and prices near retail. Sailors, students from the colleges up the road, journalists and off duty hotel staff all land here, and generations of them treat the place as a rite of passage. Old Monk and soda is the house order, dark rum at a price the boardrooms forty metres away will never learn. It opens at 11am and pours until half past one in the morning, daily.
a vegetarian canteen of the early 1970s that turned into the permit room of record · daily 11am till 1.30am · verified Aug 2026
- 5 · The Last Call
Harbour Bar, Taj Mahal Palace
The Taj's ground floor bar opened in 1933, and the house says it took the city's first bar licence; the excise register that would prove licence number one is not public, so let the room's age carry the argument instead of the number. The building is older still, the 1903 Taj Mahal Palace, a heritage pile run by a company on the register since 1902. The house story has two American sailors toasting the end of US Prohibition here, and the flambeed gin cocktail invented for them, From The Harbour Since 1933, is still on the menu at 1050 rupees, set alight at your table. It took the Best Vintage award in the first 30 Best Bars India list and still stands in the 2026 edition. Take it slowly at the window while the Gateway of India floats outside.
the hotel 1903, this bar 1933; the licence number one story is the house's own · daily 3pm till 11.45pm, and older listings say noon, so trust the later opening · verified Aug 2026 · 🏨 the night ends at Taj Mahal Palace, Mumbai