Last Call: Ep 1: Inside Vithal’s. Serving Bhel & Beer since 1875.

What does it take for a place to survive for more than 150 years? In collaboration with Bodega’s Last Call, we step inside Vithal’s Family Restaurant and Bar, a drinking institution whose story began in 1875, when the family first started selling bhel in Bombay, long before it became the vegetarian bar it is today. Still standing in the middle of a very different Mumbai, Vithal’s carries with it a version of the city that exists largely in memory: old neighborhoods, familiar faces, generations of regulars, and traditions that have somehow refused to disappear. We spend a day inside the restaurant, speaking to the family, staff and regulars about the people who shaped its story, the Bombay that once surrounded it, and the rituals that have kept the place going; from the indispensable role of chaknas in drinking culture to the memories that bring people back decades later. But perhaps the most telling part of Vithal’s is what hasn’t changed. The same staff. The same standards. The same sense of responsibility towards the name on the door. Because a bar can be somewhere you go for a drink. Or it can become part of the fabric of a city, a place you return to, year after year, generation after generation. This is Last Call. A new series by Bodega exploring India’s oldest bars and drinking institutions as living archives of the cities they belong to. CREDITS: DIRECTED BY Aamer Khan PRODUCED BY Shradha Rani Chhetri SCRIPT & RESEARCH Shradha Rani Chhetri CINEMATOGRAPHY Aditya Jha Shaurya Negi Jimmy Vaidya EDITED BY Aamer Khan ASSISTANT EDITORS Chaitanya Raste Bethany Pinto HOST Mohnish Mehta FEATURING Sunil Manhar Khadawala Haely Sunil Khadawala Sopan Bhimrao Shinde Sachin Nathuram Patil HEAD OF PRODUCTION Abhishek Shrivastava ASSISTANT DIRECTOR Sanskruti Solanki PARTNERSHIP MANAGER Twisha Agarwal PROJECT COORDINATION & QC Bhoomi Bhagat CLIENT SERVICING Hrushank Gawade ART DIRECTION Zora NVMBR Studio IN COLLABORATION WITH Bodega Tequila Image Credits: @bombaydiaries.vintage alamy.com