After a few days of Delhi's louder cuisine — the spice, the noise, the queues, the sheer intensity of it — you may want to step out of all of it for an hour. Somewhere calm and familiar, a good coffee and a quiet corner, a book if you've brought one. Delhi has grown a generation of lovely, design-led cafés that do exactly that. Here are three to retreat into.
Café Dori (Sunder Nursery) A beautiful, light-filled space set within the gardens of Sunder Nursery — all clean lines, greenery and considered detail, the kind of room that's as much about the calm as the flat white. Mediterranean-leaning food, serious coffee, and the heritage park right outside the door. The perfect pairing: a slow morning among the monuments, then a long unhurried coffee. Bring a book; you won't want to rush.
Perch (Khan Market, Vasant Vihar) A wine-and-coffee bar that's as good at 11am as it is at 9pm. By day it's a bright, low-key café for coffee, a bite and a quiet read; by evening it slides into a wine bar without changing its shirt. A civilised, grown-up room that knows exactly what it is — and being right in Khan Market, it's an easy escape hatch when the shopping and the crowds get to be too much.
LoCol (LodhiColonyl) Casual, contemporary and unfussy — the neighbourhood café done right, tucked into Lodhi Colony near the art district. All-day plates, good coffee, an easy room you can settle into without ceremony. Pair it with a wander past the Lodhi murals and you've got a gentle half-day that asks nothing of you. Comfortable, current, exactly as relaxed as it sounds.
