The Powder Room sits inside Mansionz One on Linking Road, tucked behind another restaurant, and it is easy to miss on a first pass. That is rather the point. Once you step in, the room does not simply announce itself. It transports you.
The interiors carry a distinctly African-inspired aesthetic, and the first thing that catches the eye is a striking painting of an African woman, greeting guests just past the entrance. Above it hangs the room’s real showstopper: a flowing chandelier that runs 12 by 5 feet through the central spine of the space, built by Ledomatics and paired with custom floor lamps that carry the same Sub-Saharan thread. The bar sits toward the right, and a DJ console makes it clear early on that this is a room built to shift gears as the night goes on.
Interiors at The Powder Room
We were seated at a low table, lighting dimmed deliberately to keep things moody and close. Staff offered us African-inspired shawls in case we felt cold – a small touch, but one that added to the sense that every detail here had been considered. The layered textural artwork and the kinetic wall sculpture, handcrafted by ZA Works, do a lot of the atmospheric work. Boucle and suede upholstery in animal prints sits against Red Levanto and Georgia marble tabletops, and even the passageways carry the same handcrafted detail. Nothing here feels like an afterthought.
The Powder Room is the newest concept from Speciality Restaurants, and it sits under Avik Chatterjee, the group’s Director and CEO. A second-generation entrepreneur who grew up around the legacy of Mainland China, founded by his father Anjan Chatterjee, Chatterjee has spent the last few years pushing the group toward newer, more format-driven ideas, and The Powder Room is a clear product of that instinct. The concept itself is described as a year in the making, built around the idea that Mediterranean and Asian food cultures have always had a natural, if underexplored, relationship.
The Concept
Chef Sahil Singh came over personally to walk us through the idea, and it’s genuinely unusual. The menu is built on what the kitchen calls MediterrAsian cooking: Mediterranean ingredients and technique, filtered through an Asian lens. It is a combination that does not obviously belong together on paper, and that tension is exactly what makes it interesting. This is not a Mediterranean restaurant with a few Asian garnishes, nor an Asian menu wearing Mediterranean flavours as an outfit. It reads as something the kitchen is still actively exploring, course by course.
Singh has spent time cooking modern Japanese-Peruvian at Taj Mahal New Delhi’s Wasabi by Morimoto and building India’s first modern molecular Asian tasting menu at ITC Maurya, so the instinct to sit two cuisines against each other clearly runs deep.
The Game and the Prize
Before any food arrived, we were invited to play Achi, a traditional African strategy game, against our server. We won, and the reward was a round of Powder Room shots: small, beautifully presented bottles of agave tequila and jalapeño, sharp and spicy enough to properly wake up the table. It is an unusual way to open a meal, playful rather than performative, and it set the tone for an evening that never quite settled into a conventional restaurant rhythm.
Food and drinks, in order
We eased in with the Spice Route, a makrut, grenadilla and agave tequila finished with a salt rim of aromatic leaves, tart and gently spiced without ever feeling one-note. The Powder Room shots followed as part of the game, then came the Pink Phoenix, a bergamot tequila cocktail built for sharing and served for four, its pink guava liqueur and ember malt rounded out with yuzu into something soft and faintly smoky. Rosa-del-Mare followed: flower pepper mezcal against a citrullus liqueur, blush wine and Lillet Blanc, softer and more floral than anything before it, and one of the more unusual pours on the list. Coiba closed out the opening flight: peanut butter whisky against a Musa velutina liqueur, grapefruit and chocolate bitters, an oddly savoury, almost dessert-like glass that had no business working as well as it did.
Rosa-del-Mare & Coiba Cocktails at The Powder Room
Food arrived in a similarly loose, exploratory order, starting with the hamachi tiradito, one of the stronger plates of the evening: hamachi against Baja corn and jalapeño chalaca, dressed in an orange-yuzu leche de tigre and finished with shavings of black truffle, bright and rich at once. The avocado tartare went the other way, built around a rambutan compote and yuzu truffle soy, with bulgur crunch adding sweetness, tartness and bite in the same forkful.
Hamachi Tiradito at The Powder Room (1)
The Powder Room bread came next: warm, layered with fresh black truffle and a Sichuan pepper mornay that did more work than a bread course usually needs to. It set up the mushroom croquettes well, manchego-coated and served with salsa roja and an ají verde and yellow curry cream, crisp outside, properly molten within, and a clear favourite at the table. The chicken okonomiyaki carried that same confidence: crispy boneless chicken through a tonkatsu glaze, parmesan mornay and truffle caviar, Japanese street food logic dressed in something considerably more refined than it has any right to be.
Between the richer plates, the bluefin tuna loin offered a deliberate pause, dressed simply in a yuzu vinaigrette with jalapeños and white pearl onions. The lamb cheeseburger taquitos, made with lamb mince, grana padano and a harissa mayo, went the other way entirely: compact, spiced and gone from the table within minutes.
Lamb Cheese Burger Taquito at The Powder Room
The Sichuan burrata arrived next, a cool round of cheese sitting under a slick of crispy chilli oil, with warm mantou and a miso guacamole on the side for scooping. The contrast did the work: a rich, milky centre against a chilli oil sharp enough to make you reach for the mantou immediately after. It read as a smart opener, familiar enough to place, unusual enough to remember.
Sichuan Burrata at The Powder Room
As the evening moved past its midpoint, the harissa-miso chicken skewers arrived, charred over josper and finished with togarashi and muhammara, smoky, well-spiced and among the most straightforwardly satisfying dishes of the night. The baked Chilean sea bass, cooked with shimeji and shiitake, tomato-olive tapenade and kombu butter, was the most delicate main of the evening, letting the fish stay the point of the plate rather than getting buried under its own garnish.
Baked Chilean Sea Bass at The Powder Room
Stuffed shiitake relleno rounded off the mains, spinach and gruyère packed into the mushroom with a red curry cream alongside, rich and slightly unexpected in its choice of cheese, and one of the better vegetarian moments on the menu.
Dessert arrived on its own illustrated menu, a small, playful detail that made choosing feel less like an afterthought. We went with the Valrhona chocolate fondant, its centre still properly molten, and the berry tacos, built around crème fraîche, peanut butter and Nutella. Neither dessert tried too hard, and both were the right way to close a long table.
Berry Tacos at The Powder Room
The Verdict
The Powder Room is not, at heart, a restaurant you go to for a quiet dinner. It is built for an evening that starts with food and keeps going: a game before the starters, a chandelier you keep looking up at, cocktails built around ingredients that do not usually share a glass, and a soundtrack that shifts the room’s mood as the hours pass. The MediterrAsian idea could easily have felt gimmicky. Instead, dish after dish, it felt like a kitchen genuinely working out where two cuisines meet, rather than forcing them together for effect. The cocktail programme, in particular, stood out. Nothing on the list felt like a predictable bar staple, and the flavours were layered rather than loud.
Interiors at The Powder Room
I enjoy both Asian and Mediterranean cooking on their own terms, so this particular marriage worked well for me. Whether it lands the same way for everyone will likely depend on how much you enjoy a menu that keeps you guessing. For an intimate, playful, music-forward evening that runs past the usual dinner hour, I would go back.
Service
Warm from the moment we sat down, and Chef Sahil’s own introduction to the concept added a layer most restaurants skip. The pacing between the game, the shots and the courses that followed felt considered rather than rehearsed.
Price
A tasting-style dinner for two, across cocktails and a wide spread of tapas, robata and dessert, runs into four figures per head, in line with what the space and the programme promise.
Details
The Powder Room, 8th Floor, Mansionz One, Linking Road, Bandra West, Mumbai 400050. Open Tuesday to Sunday, closed Monday, across three seatings from 7 pm to 1.30 am. Instagram: @powder.room.india
