About Koshy's Parade Cafe

A bakery that morphed into a café-store that became the first air-conditioned restaurant in South India, Bengaluru’s Koshy’s is more than an iconic corner eatery or landmark; it is an emotion, a living, breathing organism that pulsates with life. Rooted on St Mark’s Road for almost seven decades, clocking every change in the city, it has watched countless stories unfold within its walls and the soft parade of life with its unwavering gaze. The story of Koshy’s goes back to the 1940s when World War II prompted an out-of-job bank executive, P Oommen Koshy, to open a tiny bakery in the Cantonment area of erstwhile Bangalore, rather than return to Kerala. He baked traditional English bread for the garrisons—which he nicknamed ‘army loaf’—that cost an anna. From home deliveries of  bread and biscuits on bicycles, the bakery expanded into a department store on MG Road.  With help from his friends, Koshy leased a plot behind the cathedral at St Marks Road corner and moved his bakery. In 1952-53 he opened ‘Parade Café’ adjacent to it, little knowing it would turn into Bengaluru’s most iconic and beloved eatery.