Mumbai’s newest restaurant has no bar, no meat on the menu, and no reservations. Its chef-founder insists that nobody should leave without trying at least three dishes they never thought they would order.

“We want people to feel like they’ve just gone to their best friend’s house,” chef Karan Shah says about Makaan, a collaboration between Shah and restarateur Samyukta Nair, whose portfolio includes LSL Capital. “And it’s not just a best friend’s house, it’s a Gujarati best friend’s house. So everything has to have a Gujju heart to it,” Samyukta adds.

Opening on 20 October 2026 in Juhu, Makaan is a 58-cover contemporary Gujarati vegetarian restaurant that recreates the warmth, generosity, and familiarity of being welcomed into a Gujarati home over a shared meal. “We’re trying to capture a feeling, and we want it to be warm and welcoming, and that for us is our Makaan,” Samyukta says.

The origins of Makaan are as personal as its premise. The Shahs and the Nairs have known each other for years, and Karan and Samyukta’s partnership developed through a shared appreciation for food.

“We’ve had a longstanding family connection, and our friendship has really grown through food. I’ve known Karan since I was quite young, but I think I really got to know him as a person when I started enjoying food,” Samyukta says. “We both enjoy food as a love language, and we discovered that as I called on him a dozen times to help me get some of my favourite food from back in the day. We’ve been family friends for a while, and that's the beginning of us.”

“The name and idea for Makaan were always there, but I never really knew what that expression would take,” Karan adds. The concept only came together when Samyukta’s father suggested they should work together while he was on a sabbatical in London after leaving his previous job.

“We started discussing the feeling we wanted our restaurant to represent. We believe that food has to be good and service has to be good, but every successful restaurant needs something deeply rooted in it. The feeling a person leaves with is very important,” Karan says. “Sam and I connected on that. We both agreed that the experience people leave with matters as much as the food and service themselves.”

On paper, the co-founders could not be more different. While Karan spent nearly a decade in chain restaurants and has a cook’s instincts, Samyukta comes from the world of fine dining, with a family legacy in Indian hospitality and a restaurant empire spread across London and Dubai. In practice, however, they champion the same values.

“Our job profiles are very different,” Samyukta says, “but in terms of what hospitality should look and feel like, we come from the same background.” She brings a luxury operator’s discipline in presentation, service, and positioning, while he brings the home kitchen memories and the professional experience to cook from it. Karan says she helped him see Makaan as a brand far larger than he had imagined; Samyukta, who is South Indian, says the restaurant’s rootedness in Gujarati food culture is entirely his.

The phrase they keep returning to describe Makaan is “everyday luxury,” and they are careful about what it means. “Luxury is not simply something you pay for,” Karan says. For Samyukta, it’s all in the details: “The years are made up of many, many smaller moments,” and the job is “to celebrate the ordinary in the most extraordinary way.”

The space echoes this ethos. The interiors, by Esha Pandya x Design Practice, draw on the textures of a lived-in Gujarati home. The terracotta palette moves from pale clay to a deep earth, and bandhani accents nod to Gujarat’s textile traditions in muted, earthy tones. “It doesn’t scream,” Samyukta says of the room. It is “so strong, and it’s so confident, and it’s so humble in its approach that it makes you feel so welcome.”

“We want Makaan to be a neighbourhood restaurant,” Samyukta says. “We’ve not just woken up, opened a map of Mumbai and said, ‘okay, we’re going to be in the most expensive location.’ The idea of perceived luxury doesn’t have to be just bling,” she says.

Finding the right place took the team two years. The space they chose, in Amar Mahal on A.D. Road near Chandan Cinema, was the one that felt “like it resonates being in a home,” as Samyukta puts it. “The first step of being comfortable somewhere is feeling like you belong.”

With Makaan, they want to draw from and build on this nostalgia. But nostalgia, Karan admits, resists standardisation.

“The same dish in someone else’s house tastes completely different,” he says. One of the biggest challenges of bringing home-style food to a restaurant setting was maintaining both authenticity and consistency. The kitchen’s answer was long experimentation, building a taste profile of its own while honouring what people remember from their homes. “Fortunately, our chefs are really, really experienced. They have decades of experience working with these ingredients,” Karan says. “So that challenge has been overcome with the experience of my kitchen team.”

Portions posed another puzzle. In a Gujarati home, Karan says, spreading his arms as wide as he can, “the smallest bowl is this big. And a meal is not just about eating one thing, it’s about eating 100 things together.” Makaan therefore serves individual-style portions, so guests can taste their way across the menu without feeling stuffed.

Karan expects a few dishes to surprise anyone visiting Makaan for a meal, Gujarati or not. Pudla, a savoury gram-flour pancake, is a staple of Zaveri Bazaar’s street food stalls and home kitchens. “I think we’ll be one of the first restaurants in India or maybe even the world to have taken a pudla indoors,” he says. Locho, the soft, steamed Surat speciality, served here with butter, spices, sev and onion, is another highlight of the menu. “You go in Surat, you throw a stone, you’ll probably hit 10 guys selling locho. But over here in Bombay, we don’t have even one person.”

The menu follows the seasons, as Gujarati home kitchens always have. Ponk, or tender, sweet young sorghum; kand, or purple yam; surti papdi, a flat, broad green bean; and green tuvar, or tender green pigon peas, are some of the highlights of the launch menu alongside seasonal fruits such as mango, custard apple, strawberry, and guava. “Being Gujarati, we cannot have the audacity not to serve these kinds of things,” Karan says. Shrikhand and Kesar Pista soft serves, and pudina chaas, limbu pani, sugarcane juice and tender coconut complete the menu.

Makaan is walk-in only, with no tasting menu, and no pressure to order a full meal. Apart from the rotis, sabzis, and rice dishes, nearly everything else on the menu suits breakfast, lunch, dinner, or an evening snack. “There’s no pressure,” Karan says.

Samyukta calls it a contemporary Indian café, “if you want to use the word café, but I don’t think it is.” Waiting for a table is part of the experience. “You might meet a friend in the line,” she says. She sees the restaurant as a civic space: “restaurants are cultural community centres, and it’s our jobs as restaurateurs to allow people to come in and experience those spaces.”

Samyukta also does not think of Makaan as “culture-specific” restaurant. “It’s just very rooted in the culture of a specific community,” she says.

Karan puts the invitation more plainly. “You may not have heard of most of the dishes if you’re not Gujarati, but when you enter a Gujarati home, you become Gujarati.” He hopes by the time guests leave, they will have been converted.

Karan and Samyukta see Makaan as part of a wider turn toward regional Indian cooking. The generation coming up now, Karan believes, has “a lot more pride in where they’re from.”

Samyukta sees this interest in regional food as part of a broader shift in contemporary Indian dining. As diners seek experiences that are more closely connected to local cultures and traditions, restaurants have an opportunity to present regional cuisines on their own terms.

For her, they can also function as community spaces, bringing people together through shared experiences. In an increasingly digital world, a restaurant offers a physical setting in which people can meet, exchange stories and establish connections.

Makaan is the realisation of Karan and Samyukta’s dream of a modern Gujarati restaurant that feels like home. With only 58 seats and no reservations, it may appear to be a small space, but they hope — as do I after having spoken to them — that there will always be room for one more.

Opening on 20 October 2026, Makaan is located at Amar Mahal, Ground Floor, A.D. Road, near Chandan Cinema, Juhu, Mumbai. Follow @makaanindia on Instagram to learn more.

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