There is a twenty-foot Burma teak table near the bar at The Table in Colaba. Here, strangers eat together, lone eaters sit next to groups of eight people, stars from Bollywood eat along with newcomers who have walked into the place through the lane behind the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, lost their way, and never quite found their way out. This table is not merely an element of design. This is a declaration of purpose. At The Table, the food has always been a communal affair.
A Lawyer, a Husband, and the Idea That Changed South Bombay
Table was co-founded in 2011 by Jay Yousuf and Gauri Devidayal, a couple who got into the hospitality industry on an entirely unrelated path. The initial idea belonged to Yousuf, while Devidayal previously spent eight years working as a tax consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers in London and Mumbai, after earning her law degree from University College London and becoming a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. Once her husband decided to start a restaurant, she joined him in his efforts. And once she got bitten by the restaurant business bug, she did not want to leave.
“Actually, my husband Jay had the idea of opening up a restaurant,” Devidayal shared in an interview for Stac Fine Jewelry. “With absolutely no prior experience in hospitality, I began helping my husband set up The Table in Colaba, where I got bitten by the bug of the restaurant industry.”
The result is Food Matters Group, the hospitality company in Mumbai established by Yousuf and Devidayal, which includes The Table, Iktara, Magazine Street Kitchen, and other projects throughout the city. Devidayal was later included in the list of Forbes’ 120 Leaders of Change, GQ’s 50 Most Influential Young Indians, and Black Book’s Top 50 Women in Leadership. She currently serves as joint secretary at the National Restaurant Association of India.
The Chef Who Came for Three Months and Stayed Fourteen Years
Another key player in The Table story is Alex Sanchez, a young, San Francisco-born chef who came to Mumbai in 2010 when he was only twenty-six years old to assist with opening this restaurant. Sanchez was hired by his cousin Joey Altman, a consultant from the Bay Area. Two weeks prior to the opening, Joey left the country, leaving Sanchez in charge of the situation.
“At the point when I decided to move to Mumbai to help open The Table in 2010, I was an experienced and self-confident cook,” Sanchez explained in his article published on The Established. “However, until that moment in my life, I had been working in a supporting position, and now I had to take control over the situation. I was way out of my depth.” Thus, Sanchez received his on-the-spot lessons in managing the kitchen of one of the world’s most active and challenging cities. The Table became Sanchez’s platform for shaping his image of a chef: ambitious, internationally-minded, using quality products, sticking to the principle of simple but complex cuisine.
“I had a chance to see things in Mumbai that would not happen in NYC or LA,” Sanchez explained in an interview with Upper Crust India. “There everybody has seen everything. In Mumbai I could feel the chance to create something really new. The fine dining crowd is not blasé there; they are ready to play.”
After some years, Sanchez left The Table and opened Americano and Otra restaurants, which are considered to be successful. Later, the kitchen of the first place was taken over by Chef Will Aghajanian, a culinary expert with a long experience in San Sebastián and New York City. In 2025, Aghajanian changed the menu, which brought the restaurant onto the list of Asia’s 50 Best places, extended to number 88. This fact was mentioned in Knocksense.
The Space and the Table That Names the Restaurant
The design was done by architect Tarik Currimbhoy, and the outcome is a bi-level room with spacious interiors that the World’s 50 Best describes as “perfect for relaxed socializing.” It starts with the twenty-foot community teak table. It is the restaurant’s signature element and its most honest element too. The room was created for convenience. The cuisine requires focus.
The menu is guided by the philosophy of San Francisco: it draws on international flavors but relies on local ingredients with “simplicity and purity of flavor,” according to the restaurant’s own website. There are small and large shared dishes that create the experience. Lobster ravioli. Yellowfin tuna tataki. Korean barbecue beef tacos. Shrimp dumplings in spicy ginger broth. Asparagus in fig leaves with hollandaise sauce. The menu varies depending on the season and excellence, and there is no difference between the two.
The Farm Behind the Food
One of the first and most passionate farm-to-table projects was initiated by The Table in 2012 in Mumbai. The Table Farm is an initiative started on an acre of land on the property of Jay and Gauri in Sasawne, Alibag, with the help of Adrienne Thadani of Good Karma Farms,s who is an expert in urban farming. As mentioned on their website, The Table Farm produces organic spinach, beetroot, radish, carrots, mizuna and other greens, heirloom tomatoes, herbs, and different varieties of microgreens, all intended for the restaurant’s kitchen.
In addition, the project has been made available for everyone through workshops where people learn how to construct permaculture beds, sow seeds, transplant young plants, and finish up with the lunch they themselves have harvested that day.
What the Awards Say
Time Out Mumbai voted The Table Best Restaurant in India in 2014. In 2022, only two months after their eleventh year, the restaurant appeared in the extended list of Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants, ranking at No. 85 as a newcomer, according to World’s 50 Best. The restaurant appeared again in the extended list in 2025 at No. 88, and Elle India remarked that the restaurant has launched a new menu, under the direction of Chef Will Aghajanian, “that keeps comfort and simplicity in the forefront while staying true to the ethos of the restaurant, with seasonal picks and hero Indian ingredients.”
According to World’s 50 Best Discovery list, “from business workers to Bollywood stars, everyone loves The Table” and “the restaurant has been going from strength to strength.” Such appeal to a wide audience, the fact that the same room hosts all kinds of diners without attempting to cater to all possible tastes, is one of the hardest things to achieve in a city where restaurants open and close at breakneck speed. The Table was opened in 2011 and, by any standards, remains to this day the measure for new Colaba restaurants.
