The hunt for a light, nutritious and wholesome meal in Bandra is finally over! JIWA is the first Café to offer healthy roti made wraps fresh to order. The café features a clean open kitchen, in a modern green setting. They even have a little table and stools all made from actual tree trunks!
Mr. Raghav Gupta, the man behind JIWA, walked us thru the many different types of atta (flour) they use to make their roti’s. They offer multi-grain, slimming, diabetic, women special, youth plus atta and many more. Each atta is made of all natural ingredients including spinach, soya, oats, flax seeds, wheat germ and more. The atta is so well ground that you don’t even notice the difference in the roti, so no need to worry about it having that “healthy” taste. 😉 It tastes as good, if not better, than your standard roti! All of the JIWA atta is available for sale at the Café and can also be purchased through many of the online grocers (bigbasket.com, foodesto.com, localbanya.com, etc.).
The menu at JIWA is simple and you can customize your own meal on their menu card. You select your type of roti, choice of filling, greens and sauce. You can opt for a wrap or a platter, depending on how hungry you are. The choice of filling (main) includes Butter Beans and Feta, Exotic Veggies in Balsamic, Tandoori Bhindi Aloo, Paneer Shazlik, Char Grilled Fruits and Tofu Paprika. The Sauce options are a Mexican Salsa, Hummus, Desi Chutney, Pesto, Greek Yogurt, Asian Wasabi, Pesto and Nutty Peanut.
We sampled three wraps. The first was a Nutra Multigrain Roti, with the Tandoori Bhindi Aloo main and the Desi Chutney and Nutty Peanut sauce. If you are looking for more of a standard Indian flavor, this is a good choice. The nutty peanut sauce is a delicious dry Maharashtran sauce that adds a nice crunch to the wrap. The roti held up nicely, though we found the chutney to be a little overpowering.
The second wrap we tried was a Nutra Makkai Roti, with a Paneer Shazlik filling and Mexican salsa sauce. This was our favorite. The Makkai Roti was a bit thicker and worked well as a wrap. The paneer was nice and chewy and went well with the slightly sweet and spicy salsa. The salsa is a bit runny, so you need to eat the wrap right away to prevent it from getting soggy.
Finally, we sampled the Slimming Roti, with the butter bean and feta main, topped with hummus and Greek yogurt. I think we choose poorly with this combination. It ended up being overly creamy and needed a bit more crunch. It would have been nice with some fresh tomato, cucumber or other crisp salad filling. The butter beans were nice and creamy on their own and didn’t need the Greek yogurt. The lemony hummus was also delicious and would be great alone with some fresh roti. I would recommend this for a platter.
We really enjoyed our experience and would recommend JIWA for a nice light nutritious lunch or dinner. The pricing is very reasonable at 95Rps for a Roti Wrap and 175Rps for a platter. The only thing I would like to see added, is maybe some suggested wrap combinations (to avoid the over creamy combination we selected). They unfortunately did not have the desserts ready yet, but I look forward to trying them next time!
Getting there:
JIWA café
Prabhat Kunj
24th Road, Bandra W,
(Next to Elbo Room)
Mumbai, 400 051
Telephone: 93202 99480