Some of my favourite conversations have happened over a plate of momos at the Chautari cafe. I remember coming back from a protest site with my friends, and the conversations that followed.
Somewhere between the first plate and the last sip of Sikkimese green tea, conversations about politics, home, justice, and the future stretched on for hours. The group sitting next to our table chimed in, and we discussed the protest march scheduled for the next day.
We were soon joined by Beena Aunty, who appreciated the spirit of the youth and offered us a few Sikkimese treats for free. Looking back, I can barely remember what we ordered. Perhaps shared meals have always been less about food than memory.
Tucked away on Birbal Road in Jangpura Extension, Chautari was born out of friendship. A handful of friends came together to help Beena Aunty realise her dream of opening a Sikkimese cafe in Delhi. It became more than a cafe; it turned into a place where no one felt rushed, and conversations continued for hours.
In urban India, where meals often get squeezed between work, commutes, and endless social media notifications, eating together has quietly become harder. However, what stays with us is seldom the food itself.
It’s the conversations over it, the person across the table, or the plans that were made but never executed. Recent solidarity movements have reminded many that food has never been completely private. Community potlucks, protest sites, and local eateries have become places where hard conversations start.
Research has consistently suggested that social connection is one of the strongest predictors of emotional well-being. (World Happiness Report, 2024) We often tend to think of community welfare in terms of new-age interventions. Less often do we think about the ordinary rituals that quietly sustain us.
Long before mental health language pervaded our everyday vocabulary, people found ways to care for one another around the dinner table. Meals were rarely just about food; they were chances to check in, listen, celebrate, and grieve. Yet the table was never as inclusive as we sometimes remember it to be.
Caste and class often determined who could sit, who would serve, and who remained outside. Many celebrations carried a tradition of exclusion. This exclusion has become exemplified during weddings or religious festivals, revealing who dictates who sits at the communal dining table.
As Arjun Appadurai argued through his idea of gastro-politics, “public meals reveal social power more clearly than speeches ever could. The order of seating, who serves whom, who eats first and who remains outside the circle—all become performances of hierarchy.”
Food-based exclusion does not operate through caste alone. Communities from Northeast India have long experienced suspicion around their food cultures.
Public debates around the consumption of dog meat, a few years ago, reduced entire communities to stereotypes, portraying them as uncivilised or inhumane. (Desoucey, 2016) These narratives curtail not only what people have the freedom to eat, but also who is allowed to belong within the national imagination
Perhaps this is why Chautari feels different. Those who came together to work on the idea imagined it to be more than a restaurant.
In Nepali culture, a chautari is a stone platform under a shady tree—a resting place for travellers to eat, breathe, and talk. It belongs to no one and to everyone. It offers shade, company, and conversation.
Staying true to this idea, they imagined a space where conversations could continue, disagreements could be welcomed, and Sikkimese food could be served alongside its histories and politics.
Cafes like Chautari remind us that restaurants are not merely businesses selling food. Chautari started with a simple idea: to introduce Delhi to Sikkimese-Nepali cuisine without compromising ethics.
The cafe sets prices that reflect fair labour, pays its workers well, sources products from women’s self-help groups in Sikkim, uses biodegradable packaging, and creates space for discussions around dissent. In doing this, it places greater value on relationships than transactions.
Perhaps that is why I keep returning to this little cafe in Jangpura. Sometimes for the Jhol Momos, sometimes for the tea, but mostly for the chance to talk to a kindred spirit about what matters to me.
On any given evening, Chautari feels less like a restaurant and more like a chill spot in the city. The walls reflect Sikkim’s political history, the bookshelves are filled with memoirs of revolutionaries, and the menu showcases culinary traditions often missing from Delhi’s food scene. Over shared meals, discussions can contribute to the dialogue about solidarity, resistance, and belonging.
What we might need today is not just more restaurants, but more places where conversations foster communities, and a shared meal reminds us that belonging is something we build together.
Perhaps that is what a chautari has always been.
The author is a practicing psychodynamic therapist and the co-founder of The Depth Collective.
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