Mumbai’s popular brand Subko is finally in town, with a new outlet in Indiranagar

In this fast-moving world where the ‘grab and go’ concept is growing more popular than ever, in comes a brand (that launched in 2020) with specialty coffee concoctions promising to offer craft coffee made with high-quality beans sourced from across the globe. That’s right! We are talking about Mumbai’s renowned coffee brand founded by Rahul Reddy. The Subko Specialty Coffee Roasters that has taken the country by storm has now found itself a space in Bengaluru.

Tucked away within Bombay Shirt Company, their cosy cubby hole is perfect for a quick cup of great coffee as the mini outlet serves both hot and cold coffee-based beverages, with a focus on their daily roasts. While Subko Mini may not be equipped to make food just yet, they do have bags of sliced croissants and toasts to accompany your coffee.

If you have visited their outlets in Mumbai, you will recognise the signature coffee bean and croissant illustrations hung on the wall as soon as you step inside their shop that houses a small dukaan (in-house store), brewing station and a couple of seating arrangements.

While we scoured our eyes through the place, a pot of Ratnagiri Pour Over from Project Pearl, a tribute to Karnataka’s Ratnagiri estate and its founder, made its way to our table. The medium roast coffee inoculated with yeast and fermented gave away evident notes of passion fruit, blackberry and salted caramel.

For the next pot from their Bloom Bar, we preferred to watch the aromatic brewing process of Whiskey Barrel Aged Pour Over, which was an olfactory and gustatory delight. Made from the beans of The Spirit Series, the medium roast coffee aged in a cask barrel gave a whiff of whiskey and tasted oakey and a little like Irish cream.

Along with a delectable glass of SIF On The Rocks, which is a South Indian Filter coffee sweetened with condensed milk served on ice, we enjoyed a plate of POTO aka Portable Toast in Himalayan Pink Salt and Podi Gunpowder. POTO is a gluten-free loaf of bread that is thinly cut into its cross sections, baked, seasoned and packed to serve a longer shelf life.

Out of everything we tried that day, the Cascara Lemonade was hands down our favourite. Cascara, a Spanish word for husk, refers to the dried skin of coffee cherries, which was used to make this tea infused with lemonade that had a sweet and fruity taste. We munched on some Croissant Thins, another treat under their Project Cross Sections. Although all the three flavours — Cacao Dark Chocolate, Cinnamon Chai Spice and Classic Butter — were delicious in their own way, the dark chocolate left us 
wanting more.

P.S. Subko also has an interesting collaboration in the works that will offer artisanal ice cream treats later this month.

Coffee for two: ₹500 onwards. At Indiranagar.