A courtyard full of surprises: How a community space nurtures Bengaluru’s creative spirit

Once the home of Akhila’s grandmother, The Courtyard has seen several transformations over the years that have brought it to its current avatar. For seven years, it was a simple café, overlooking a turf-lined angala (square courtyard), where the creative community always found a place to meet, work and relax. The iced teas here were popular. In 2018, Akhila revamped The Courtyard’s look. The café continued and the central space opened to several events. “The initial plan was a blank slate, with no vision for it to hold multiple entities,” she says. “The last 2-3 years after Covid taught me that there were many interesting people out there already doing great work. All they needed was a nurturing space and the sort of encouragement that made things easy for them,” she explains.

The story of Naru Noodle Bar attests to this. During the Covid lockdown months, Chef-Founder Kavan Kuttappa made ramen kits from his home kitchen, packing as many as 420 boxes of seven elements each, every night. “When the lockdowns were lifted, I quit my job to make ramen. Akhila asked me if I would like to have a pop-up at The Courtyard. The café’s coffee counter, to our great luck, looked exactly like a ramen counter! Several pop-ups later and those wonderful ice teas to power it, I took Akhila up on the offer of using the space at The Courtyard and opened my ramen bar as an 8-seater in August 2022. We expanded to 20 seats in December 2023 and today, our noodle boiler is just five feet away from where that coffee counter once was! It was just meant to be,” says Kavan.

In February this year, The Courtyard opened Wine in Progress (W.I.P), a wine ‘dive’ bar, as Akhila likes to call it, operational between 5 pm and 11 pm. It serves a changing roster of wines, with small plates from Naru next door. “I think we are not far away from the time when we are going to see bars opening specifically for a particular spirit. There is no wine bar in the city and this spurred the idea of taking one spirit and championing it well. We began it as a bi-weekly pop-up at The Conservatory for about nine months to test it and while it did not run to full houses each time, we knew that it would do well as a small space, and today we have it as a dedicated 12-seater in a 300 sq. ft. space,” explains Akhila.

The Conservatory

At the enclosed rooftop space, a 44-step climb up, is The Conservatory, which celebrated its second anniversary in June. Today, the first-floor landing leading up to it has a large collage of almost all the 55 chefs (and counting) who have cooked here over the past two years, a testimony to its popularity. Created in early 2023, this 1500-sqft space was inspired by the glass house at the nearby Lalbagh Botanical Garden and encompasses the 100-year-old Raintree that spirals up from the entryway. Seating 30, it has become a much coveted pop-up destination for chefs across the country. Chefs Karan Upmanyu, Seefah Ketchaiyo, Pablo Benitez, Manuel Olveira, Auroni Mookerjee, Hussain Shahzad, Taiyaba Ali, Buland Shukla, Rahul Gomes Pereira, Viraf Patel, Abhishek Deshmane and more have cooked here at pop-ups, giving the city a glimpse of culinary creativity that goes beyond restaurant creations.

Dina Weber, Founder of SAPA Bakery, Mysuru, calls Akhila a great connector and space provider. “She gives people a functional canvas and the freedom to use it the way one feels is best. It’s the freedom her team enjoys as well, from whom she expects the same energy and initiative. They come up with ideas and feel responsible for the space, too. So, as a professional, you know you are taken care of because everyone has the same sense of ownership. And I think when something is as vibrant and evolving as The Courtyard, it stays alive and interesting, making chefs like me keen to work with the team. Trust is high here because of the reputation the space enjoys,” says Dina.

The central courtyard no longer has the turf-lining, but remains a community space that sees a multitude of artistic offerings from Sufi baithaks to bake sales, flea markets, Sunday family picnics, BBQ or burger pop-ups, open-air movie screenings with dinner, acoustic music nights, and more.

In the offing: A Subko coffee outlet

“I remember discussing with Akhila that if many outlets were to open and some remain permanent, The Courtyard may end up being a food court, but it’s not. It’s an interesting confluence of various art forms and intersections. Food is still a focus, the baithaks will have tea and samosas, and movie nights will have a three-course meal served. It is a space for everybody and all age groups, and there isn’t another like it in the heart of Bengaluru where, if you are not interested in one programme, you may find something else interesting,” says Karan Upmanyu, Chef and Founder of Woodstreet Sauce Co., who has been associated with The Courtyard since October 2021. He also designed a concise menu for W.I.P in its bi-weekly pop-up phase and for the first three months of its permanent status.

While it is currently a space where footfalls are event-driven, Akhila plans to change that with the launch of a Subko coffee outlet at The Courtyard. Her grandmother’s old home is being repurposed, on similar lines as the Mary Lodge Subko outlet in Bandra, Mumbai. “Coffee ties into a lot of things we do. It’s good to have food and drink available throughout the day at a creative spot. Also, people just want to hang out — after a performance or a meal at Naru or The Conservatory. Coffee also draws a lot of walk-ins. This helps because the more people walk in, the more they know what is happening here, besides us promoting things online. Subko, despite having multiple outlets, is still considered craft and is focused on subcultures in design and brand, making this a natural fit,” says Akhila. The outlet, spread across two floors and spanning 2,000 sqft, will open towards the end of July.

So, does that leave any space at all for something more? Akhila smiles and points to the first floor, just below The Conservatory, which is currently being used as an event space, and says, “My mind is already racing with ideas!”