BLUE FROG, Music Club
Career and investment banker, Simran Mulchandani; music production house Smoke’s Ashutosh Phatak; musician Dhruv Ghanekar; advertising veteran Mahesh Mathai and manager of Highlight Films, Srila Chatterjee, jumped at the idea of together creating a new animal in town – the Blue Frog. Located in the Mathuradas Mill Compound in Lower Parel, the music club was created in an old warehouse that had earlier had tailors whirring away for a furnishing company. This amazing area, with its sense of vastness and high ceiling, has been designed by architect Kapil Gupta whose initial presentation thrilled with its flavour of ‘La Scala meets the mill’.

A long bar engages the attention as you enter but this then is immediately drawn to the intimacy of opera house-like boxes which the tables are ensconced in, creating an interior that allows you to be in stylish isolation and yet able to enjoy thoroughly the live music performances, every night. In fact a concept of super dining, as yet new to the often boisterous dinner crowds of Mumbai, is being introduced here, perhaps to the chagrin of a few over-chatty diners. The interiors however were designed around the acoustics rather than the other way around. “Everything was planned around the acoustics,” says Chatterjee. “We had to marry acoustics, interiors, bar, cuisine – everything is completely original and we are thrilled.” In fact, UK’s Andy Munro, acoustic architects, worked very closely with Gupta while the kitchen too had a very specialised design.

The club is partnered by Rahul and Malini Akerkar, the city’s favourite restaurateurs and Rahul has created a menu that is as different as the décor. “The concept of Blue Frog is not fine dining but hearty dining,” says Malini. “The idea is to have a magical meal to go with magical music.” And as Chatterjee maintains, eyes glowing, “Perfect acoustics and great dining; like dying and going to heaven.”