Café Auberge: The Power of Six
By Urvashi Singh
A recent addition to Jaipur’s vibrant culinary landscape comes in the form of a quaint café nestled in the city’s Achrol House compound. Café Auberge, as it has come to be known, ticks all the boxes for the quintessential hip local eatery- a home café that values familial recipes and experiential hospitality. But there’s another twist to Café Auberge’s unique story of conception that we have only seen thus far in fictional archetypes. And that is, that the café is a joint creation of three sisters and their husbands, who have come together with their fortes and talents as a truly power packed team.
Parthvi & Raghu, Mandvi & Shakti Vijay and Priyamvada & Divyabhan, the three couples were at a usual family get together. They were all enjoying a cookout when the eureka moment arrived. Why not put together our individual expertise together and start a home café, along with a lifestyle store? And boom, the idea began brewing. The team of six jointly conferred on their separate but interlinked interests that could be promising if combined to launch a successful business.
And so, the renovations began over four to five exciting months.The home café that the six jointly invented has become a bustling dining space for tourists and local residents alike. The versatile kitchen of Café Auberge, largely managed by ex MNC professional and organic farmer Divyabhan, whips up everything from Rajasthani, Mexican and Lebanese to Continental and Italian cuisines. Even though it steers clear of attaching itself to one particular culinary theme, Café Auberge celebrates family recipes from the house of Bhinder, which it terms as Bhinder Specials. Some of these house special items include Bhinder special mutton, smoked keema, soya bean keema, junglee murgh and murgh masala. These young founders of the café have also delved into cooking experiments with their house specials to produce novel entrees such as the mutton galouti burger and smoked mutton keema pizza.
Attached to it is the 2-room homestay, run by the team’s key designer, Priyamvada. Seven years ago, Priyamvada had teamed up with her sister, Mandvi to create Meera from The House of Bhinder, a design house that specialised in interiors. Inspired by their mother, who they grew up seeing with her keen eye for classy interiors, the sisterly duo devised sustainable, cost effective ways of sprucing up tasteful interiors. Adding to this, the third sister Parthvi says, “This was the start of our journey. We partnered with carpenters, weavers and a lot of women from our area, thereby getting them a fixed income in the process. Meera has been online for 7 years now as a unique concept store, that sells everything that it displays”.
Since most of their projects are women-centric and work towards the empowerment of local women, Parthvi accounts their deliberate naming of the venture after the iconic sage, Mira Bai. She also mentioned hailing from a house that has been influenced deeply by Mira Bai’s spiritual teachings, the Mira Charit in particular. This got me to my question vis-a-vis the cafés nomenclatural journey.
Parthvi recalls that during the early days of the café’s renovation, Divyabhan was hooked to a country song that he never failed to play every single day. The name of the song happened to be Auberge. So when it was time to pick a name for their home café, Auberge it was. “We felt Café Auberge would be perfect since it takes us back to the memories when we were working hard to design the café. On research, we learned that Auberge is a French Word which means motel in the countryside, serene and peaceful, and that’s exactly ho the café is. It’s serene and peaceful despite being located in the heart of Jaipur, and the colour schemes happen to be French too. Hence, Auberge made sense, for it reflected our journey all through!”, Parthvi explains.
Her husband, Raghu is a veteran in the tourism industry, and is known for his famous Pushkar-based Camp Land’s End. Parthvi herself has been the force behind her family-run heritage homestay in Bhinder. Their combined experience and networking within the industry has been a bolstering force for this newly-launched dining venture. One of the three sisters, Mandvi is married to an army officer, Shakti Vijay. The two operate remotely from their various field postings. Mandvi manages the home café cum store’s inventory and dealer relationship. Her better half, with his professionalism and discipline serves the team as their guiding light.
An intra familial working of this nature is an archetype that I had thus far found in idealistic novels and movies. But to see the same vision taking shape in the real world is heartwarming and inspiring indeed. A symbiotic space conceptualised by diverse individuals serves Jaipur with a breath of fresh air indeed! Café Auberge has been in the limelight recently, not just for the culinary delights that they’ve been whipping up, or their homely service, but for the events that they’ve been hosting. To this, Parthvi adds, “We wish to give everyone a homely feel, where everyone is welcome. This is a place where you aren’t judged for being ho you are. We have immense respect for art and artists, we host queer events and live music, themed dinners and social networking nights. In fact, we plan a calendar for every month, and accordingly plan the event. We’ve all been big on events and aim to do bigger events in the time to come”.
Looking ahead, Parthvi mentions plans of a pan-India service of their packaged best sellers. She also confirms Café Auberge’s newly-introduced catering services in a bid to make the venture future ready.
Last month, Café Auberge won the Best Home Café in Jaipur Award at a ceremony held at the Rambagh Palace, Jaipur. It has also been the recipient of the first India and Bikaji Food & Hospitality Awards 2023.
