Café Arzaneh
A century-old Irani café in Camp, online: the chalkboard menu, the house rules, and a mawa cake reserved straight from the oven.
A studio concept: a fictional product we designed and built to show how we work. Not a client project.
The best thing on the menu sells out by 7:52.
Café Arzaneh has been on Taboot Street since 1921: twenty-two marble tables, bentwood chairs, a wood-fired oven that has never moved, and a chalkboard above the counter. Nine batches come out of that oven every day, and the mawa cake goes first.
The site had to feel like walking in, not like a delivery app. So the homepage is marble and brass, the menu is the board as it hangs, and the house rules are the plaque by the cash counter. Then one modern idea, made to fit: every bake is posted the moment it goes in, and you can reserve your share of the tray before it comes out.
We named the café, wrote its history and its menu, designed the website and the pickup app, and built both as working prototypes with a live oven schedule.
- 01
Keep the café's voice: the board, the rules and the bentwood chairs come first.
- 02
Show the oven live, so you know what is coming out and when.
- 03
Reserve from a batch in two taps, and keep it warm for twenty minutes.
- 04
Order from the board itself, without a second menu to learn.
The board, as it hangs above the counter.
Chalked fresh every morning by the manager, in rupees with taxes included. On the site it is also the menu you order from: tap any line to add it to a pickup order.
CHAI & DRINKS All day
THE BAKERY Baked on the premises
PLATES Kitchen till 10 pm
Reserve yours before it leaves the oven.
Nine batches a day, each posted the moment it goes in. Pick how many, and they are set aside on the tray and kept warm at Counter 2 for twenty minutes. Try it: Batch 4 is in the oven.
Mawa Cake
Batch 4, from the 1921 oven
Khoa, cardamom, a pinch of nutmeg. Best inside the hour.
Nine batches a day. Here is the morning.
- 7:50AMMawa cakeBatch 3 · 0 of 36 leftOut at 7:52 amSold out
- 8:40AMMawa cakeBatch 4 · 18 of 36 leftIn the ovenReserve
- 10:00AMKhari biscuitBatch 5 · 250 g packs · 31 of 40 leftGoes in at 9:34 amNotify me
- 11:30AMChicken puffsBatch 6 · 36 of 48 leftGoes in at 11:04 amNotify me
- 1:00PMBuns & brunBatch 7 · lunch rush · 89 of 120 leftGoes in at 12:34 pmNotify me
- 4:00PMMawa cakeBatch 8 · the tea-time one · 32 of 36 leftGoes in at 3:34 pmNotify me
Order from the board
The menu is the chalkboard, line for line. Tap Mawa Cake and it lights brass, the bag counts one, and a note confirms Batch 4 for 8:45 pickup.
Six are yours
Your spots on the tray glow, the label flips to kept warm till 9:05, and the button becomes your token. Pay at Counter 2, or by UPI.
Every Irani café has rules. Ours are mostly about chai.
The site carries the café's voice in its copy, not just its colours. Hand-painted in 1952, repainted in 1987, amended once in 2019 when the laptops arrived. Rule six is how the oven feature explains itself.
HOUSE RULES
- One chai buys the table for one hour. A second chai buys the second hour.
- Dunking the bun maska is permitted. Encouraged, even.
- No combing of hair at the table. No discussing property prices.
- Laptops are welcome after 11 am. Phone calls on speaker, never.
- Do not ask for credit. Do not ask for the mawa cake recipe.
- Reserved bakes are kept warm for twenty minutes. After that, we eat them.
Four tables, one oven, and a village name.
The café's history, written for the site: Behram Arzani opened on Taboot Street in the winter of 1921. Today his great-granddaughter Shirin runs the counter.
Marble, bottle green, brass and chalk.
Design systemstrong chai,
since 1921.
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Mawa cake · Batch 4
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