Inside the Bandra kitchen, where every batch of Alphonso mango starts with a crate of fruit cut by hand that morning.
A batch of Alphonso mango begins at six in the morning with a crate of fruit and three people with knives.
Cutting
Each mango is peeled and cut by hand, because a machine cannot tell a ripe one from a stringy one. Forty mangoes go into a single twenty-litre batch. This stage alone takes an hour.
Cooking and resting
Milk, cream and sugar are cooked gently, cooled fast and left to rest for four hours. The rest is what makes the texture smooth.
Churning
The mango goes in last, straight into the churner, so it never gets cooked. Ten minutes later the batch is tasted, packed by hand and frozen hard.
Why only in season
We make this flavour from April to June, when Alphonso is at its best. The rest of the year it comes off the menu, so that is when to order it.
