A Churchgate Classic

THERE ARE RESTAURANTS, and then there are rituals.

Gaylord is the latter—Bombay’s oldest dining room, where laughter lingers longer than cocktails and calories mingle with conversation to create memory. For 67, shimmering years, this Churchgate classic has been the city’s comfort zone—where love stories begin over butter-garlic prawns, families quarrel over caramel custard, and friendships like mine and Nirbhay’s find both flavour and forever.

We were there for his 25th birthday, the dawn of what I called his “quarter-life coronation”.

Nirbhay Choudhary—Delhi-born, Haryana-bred, Bombay-burnished—my best friend, confidant, co-conspirator, and, when life insists on irony,

my stand-in lover. The boy who can turn a frown into a festival, who reads my mind before I finish my sentence, who tells me I’m wrong but never leaves my side. We met through Rohit Bal— Gudda —our shared mentor and magician who once told us, “You two are made for each other”, and meant it not as romance but recognition.

That night, Gaylord gleamed like a grand old film set. Chandeliers crooned Lata and Kishore, mirrors mirrored decades of desire, and walls blushed beneath candlelight. We were four— Parabjot Bali from Jammu, Satyansh Bhardwaj from Dehradun, Nirbhay from Delhi, and me—Delhi-born, Bombay-belonged, Manhattan-made, a New Yorker back in the city that never truly leaves you. Between us lay a

feast—chicken kebabs, baked chicken in white sauce, butter-garlic prawns glistening like sequinned dreams, penne arrabbiata, grilled fish, roasted vegetables, and patatas bravas winking with spice and swagger.

Dessert was nostalgia plated in sugar—baked Alaska aflame like a Deepavali sky, sticky toffee pudding that clung like memory, caramel custard trembling with tenderness, and a hot chocolate fudge sundae worthy of RD Burman.

The restaurant—now reborn under Dhruv and Divij Lamba—looked like a love letter to old Bombay. Its Parisian patio flirted with Marine Drive’s sea breeze; its Madan Mahatta photographs whispered of decades gone by— Raj Kapoor in repose, Lata mid-note, Pandit Ravi Shankar lost in raga. You could almost hear ballroom laughter, smell the starch of a 1960s dinner jacket, feel the flirtation of a city caught between sepia and spotlight. Yet here we were—the new Bombay—sneakers, filters, fever dreams, and it still felt right.

Gaylord 2.0 had kept its soul but changed its skin—the perfect metaphor for Nirbhay turning 25.

He stood at the edge of his own cinematic season—filming ‘Galwan’ with Salman Khan, toggling between Leh’s frozen grandeur and Bandra’s humid hustle. Yet that evening, over clinking glasses and wicked laughter, he was just my boy—the one who steals the last prawn, who sends sunrise selfies from set, who murmurs, “Chef, we’re doing okay”. And yes, we are—gloriously, gratefully okay.

As we toasted—to him, to Gaylord, to this magnificent metropolis—I realised the restaurant has been what friendship often is: a constant amid reinvention. The city changes, skylines climb, people come and go—but Gaylord remains a refuge, a reminder that comfort needn’t be complacent.

At midnight, when the staff brought out the baked Alaska and the pianist struck ‘Ye Dosti’, Nirbhay laughed that loud, liberating laugh— the kind that turns heads, melts hearts, and makes you believe in beginnings again.

I looked at him—this boy-man of 25— and thought of Gaylord, 70 years young, still seducing, still serving, still smiling. Both classics. Both contemporary. Both proof that legacy isn’t what endures unchanged, it’s what evolves without erasing love.

So here’s to Gaylord, where time dines and nostalgia never leaves a tip.

And here’s to Nirbhay Choudhary—actor, anchor, accident, and ally—who reminds me that some people, like some restaurants, are not phases.

They’re fixtures.

And they only get finer with age.