Thursday, October 13

Anders, Lars and Rajesh have owned and run ABC – A Beach Café, on Lighthouse Beach – for many years, but last February they put that to one side in favour of attempting to start a high quality café, gallery, and restaurant space in Trivandrum.

Today we finally visited Velvet Dawn, the almost immediately successful place they started. I pause to photograph the entrance into the building, a former townhouse now converted into a café and restaurant that looks as though it has existed forever.

Leo tells us that in February the outside of the building looked like a building site. Now it looks as though a friendly jungle of plants has grown there for decades. The outside courtyard feels completely isolated from the city and the inside – a little warren of small and intimate dining rooms – has a very relaxed ambience to it.

We will meet Sahan there, sitting in the courtyard having an online meeting: something that Velvet Dawn positively encourage. We will eat food that makes the long journey completely worthwhile. The cakes could win prizes in any cake competition anywhere.