Roxie and Barry, Bengaluru’s first Indo-Italian crafthouse, is where Amalfi Coast glamour meets Apulian simplicity — and a 30-year-old story finally gets its room.
I walked in, turned left, and the place revealed something fascinating. You hear it before you see it. A cascade of water falling 10 to 12 feet from a break in the canopy above — tall trees pressing it on either side, the sky arriving only in glimpse through the green. It doesn’t announce itself. The presence is felt. And once you’ve seen it, the evening has already started well.
Tables are set along one side, carrying that same open view — the water, the rock, the creeper-covered greenery — and the whole arrangement extends naturally up to the first level, giving the outer area a generous, breathing quality you don’t often find in a city that builds inward. You are outside, but held. The feeling is somewhere between a Positano terrace and a very good decision.
Then the interiors draw you in. White and beige throughout — light, considered, easy on the eye. Web-like white shades spread across the ceiling, wall lamps hold the room in a soft warmth, and tea-lit candles flicker in a glass on each table. Wood-cushioned chairs, European in their ease. Arched walls, flowery creepers at the edges, trees pressing in from outside. The whole interior carries the relaxed confidence of an Italian bistro that has nothing to prove and knows it. You could be sitting, quite convincingly, somewhere between Positano and Ostuni — if either of those places had this good a cocktail list.
This is Roxie & Barry — Bengaluru’s top Indo-Italian crafthouse, conceived by restaurateur Pravesh Pandey and built around two characters whose contrasting Italian coastal souls shape both the menu and the mood. Roxie brings the Amalfi — celebratory, citrus-bright, a little dramatical. Barry brings Apulia — quieter, earthier, the philosophy of honest cooking expressed without fuss. Together they make a room that feels, from the moment you walk in, like it already knows you.
And Barry, as it turns out, was never really planned. He arrived the way the best things do — quietly, through the guests. The music on weekday evenings that nobody advertised. The outdoor corner that people just kept finding their way to. Little things, noticed and loved before anyone had thought to name them. Eventually someone did. That someone was Barry.
The kitchen honours that same spirit. Chef Jagdish Naidu — who has cooked under Gordon Ramsay in London, spent six years refining his craft in New York, and most recently headed Ishaara as brand chef across India — brings a quietly European sensibility to every plate. And it shows. Pasta shaped daily by hand. Stocks slow-cooked from raw. No premixes, no shortcuts. Michelin-minded thinking in a bistro setting — unhurried, unpretentious, and quietly confident. Time, as they insist here, is an ingredient.
What arrived at the table…?
From Roxie’s Amalfi kitchen: The Charred Pineapple al Piccante — gently smoked, layered with coconut-turmeric sauce and goat cheese mousse — opens things with quiet confidence. The Ricotta & Truffle Agnolotti, house-made pasta parcels finished in sage butter, is the dish that tells you most clearly what this kitchen believes in. The Mediterranean Baked Seabass is clean, coastal, assured. As a vegetarian, this writer found the table more than generously looked after — the green options here are thoughtfully conceived, not an afterthought.
From Barry’s Apulian side: The Lobster Bisque Risotto — slow-simmered, seafood-rich, built with layers of depth — is Barry at his most considered. The Hummus & Lamb Bolognese, a comforting meeting of Middle Eastern warmth and Italian tradition, works far better than it has any right to. The Confit Duck Leg with Mushroom Jus — slow-cooked to tenderness, paired with silky mash and reduced jus — is the kind of dish that earns the silence it creates at the table.
At the bar, Roxie’s Secret Collection pours Summer in Sicilia, Tequila Flora, White Petronia and Beni Hana — each one a small narrative in a glass. Barry’s Paradise answers with Scarlet Whisper, Pandon Moon, Barry’s Signature Picante and the gloriously named Drink at Your Own Risk, which rewards the brave. And a Classic Negroni that is, in my considered opinion, exactly what a Classic Negroni should be — nothing added, nothing missing.
Every evening at 7 PM, the room pauses — a welcome moment, a ritual, a breath before the night properly begins. At Roxie & Barry, the details are the point. And behind all of it —there is a story. One that began on a cruise ship thirty years ago, with a graceful Italian woman named Roxie Catania, who handed a 22-year-old waiter something far more lasting than a good tip. Pravesh built this place for her, in his way.
What that means to him — what it cost, what it took, and what he hopes it becomes — is a conversation I had the privilege of finishing over a glass with the man himself. It follows in Part Two.
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