3 days ago
Around Town: Why everyone — from Salman Khan to Azim Premji — stops by Worli's iconic 80-year-old City Bakery
Businessman and philanthropist Azim Premji may be based in Bengaluru, but the former Wipro chairman makes a special pit stop whenever he visits Mumbai. On his way from the airport to his residence, he stops at the iconic City Bakery on Annie Besant Road in Worli, steps out of the car, and picks up fluffy pavs and jeera butter for himself — a ritual that, as we learn from the third generation running the bakery, has been going on for decades.
Spend just ten minutes outside the bakery, and you'll see a wide range of customers making quick dashes, some stocking up on daily essentials like bread, pav, and biscuits, others indulging in their beloved buttercream pastries.
The bakery, which boasts a now-defunct but iconic chimney with City Bakery boldly painted in red, was established in 1945 as a 'pav bakery' by an Iranian gentleman, Haji Mohammad Jarrahiam, a man of sharp business acumen who came to Bombay during World War II.
'Back then, every cross-section of the city had at least four Irani restaurants because Hindus considered the corner shops inauspicious and avoided setting up shop there. It was also common for one person to have small stakes in multiple restaurants, similar to owning shares in different companies,' shared Jafar Dashti, 60, who, along with his younger brother Mehdi, 53, represents the third generation custodian of the bakery. 'My maternal grandfather was a visionary. Although very small, he had stakes in as many as 78 restaurants in the city. He built significant wealth through this model.'
But there was a supply issue — all those restaurants needed pav, and Jarrahiam was struggling with suppliers. 'When he found a vacant plot (the current premises on Annie Besant Road), he and two Parsi bawas decided to set up their own bhatti and make their own pav. He had enough restaurants of his own that even without external customers, the bakery could do well,' Jafar said.
Parallelly, Jafar's father — a young Habib Dashti — arrived in Bombay by train during Partition. 'He did multiple odd jobs, including cleaning at restaurants, eventually made a name for himself, and earned some wealth using the same model of owning small stakes in multiple restaurants. It wasn't as much as my grandfather's, but it was still significant. When he proposed to marry my mother, my grandfather accepted,' said Jafar.
He added that his grandfather also made another proposal: Sell all those small restaurant stakes and buy out the two Parsi partners in the bakery. Habib agreed and became a partner in City Bakery in the 1960s.
From there, the bakery began to grow. The 1970s saw the addition of biscuits, and cakes followed in the 1980s, and the rest gradually expanded. Today, they sell around 95 items across categories like biscuits, breads, snacks, pastries, birthday cakes, tea cakes, all made in two shifts: one overnight for the morning batch and one through the day for the evening crowd.
Among the most sold items are Chocolate Chip Cake (Rs 330 for 500 gm), Jam Shrewsberry (Rs 460/kg), Chocolate Eclair (Rs 70 per piece), and Palmier Biscuit (Rs 540/kg).
Although the original wood-fired ovens have long been replaced with PNG-run ones, the tall chimney still stands. 'It's free advertising,' Jafar laughed. 'Whenever someone asks where exactly we are in Worli, we just tell them to look up!'
The latest addition? Sourdough bread. 'We've started making it recently,' said Jafar, who, along with Mehdi, began learning the ropes at the bakery during summer vacations as children.
Today, City Bakery, which opens at 5 am and shuts by 10 pm, serves a wide range of customers: the common man who values both price and quality, office goers who stop by for a post-lunch treat or a quick sandwich before catching their train, and commercial clients — including caterers, restaurants, and hotels like Ginger Hotel and Thane's Cafe Irani.
'To be honest, everyone comes here. There are many people who park their cars and send their drivers to pick up an order. But our biggest customer base is still the grassroots. They're the ones who suggested we stop giving plastic bags to keep costs low. They bring their own,' Jafar said with quiet pride.
When we pushed him for an anecdote, he hesitantly shared one about Salman Khan and their coconut cookies. 'It was right after Covid-19. Lockdown was being lifted, but we hadn't resumed operations yet when we got a request for coconut cookies. We said, 'Sorry, we're not open.' His team replied, 'Bhai ko khaana hai (Bhai really wants to eat them). What's the minimum order to make it happen?' They placed an order for 5 kg of cookies,' Jafar chuckled as he signed off.
