Culture
Curated Cool With A Hollow Heart: Noida’s Emerging Café Culture
They follow a familiar playbook you could trace back to a Pinterest board. Décor-first design with cute walkways, glass façades, whitewashed walls, pastel palettes, warm lighting, live plants, fairy lights, rattan chairs, and an abundance of photo corners. Courtyards or terrace decks come with umbrellas, vines, partitions, or swings, while industrial-chic cues show up in exposed brick, raw cement finishes, and neon signs flashing kitschy quotes like “Good vibes only” or “But first, coffee.”
The vibes swing from boho courtyards and Balinese tropics to Japanese minimalism, Mediterranean whites, Parisian bistros, and Scandinavian simplicity. All stitched together for the camera, more than for any coherent sense of craft. Whether staged, temporary, or impractical hardly matters, as long as the frames look good.
This is the new face of Noida, the south-eastern suburb of India’s capital, Delhi. Here, a café revolution of sorts is underway, that’s desparately trying to shake off the suburb’s utilitarian past in favour of curated cool. On social media, the transformation looks complete. In reality, it feels hollow at the core.
Aesthetic Illusions
Drive down the newly developed sectors along the Noida–Greater Noida Expressway and you’ll see the transformation in full display. What was once a landscape of empty plots, hardware stores, shanty kiosks, and repair shops has morphed into a curated strip of wannabe chic cafés and diners. Neighbourhoods that once epitomised Delhi NCR’s no-nonsense pragmatism now flaunt establishments that try hard to pass for outposts in Canggu or Thonglor.
The ambitions are lofty. Flush with rising incomes, a wave of globe-trotting entrepreneurs come back with borrowed aesthetics and half-baked ideas. What they build are cafés that excel at looking good, but fail spectacularly at being good. The décor sparkles just long enough for a curated reel before collapsing into the hollow truth: a stage set without a play.
Scratch beneath the varnish, and the illusion crumbles. You’ll find uninspired food priced like fine dining, dressed up for Instagram but stripped of imagination and joy, served with all the warmth of a vending machine. Ask about the ingredients in your lasagna, and you’ll get a blank stare — at Kokoy, it was more baked vegetable than lasagna. Coffee never arrives hot; it’s invariably lukewarm. Neon lights and photo corners may distract, but the mediocrity is impossible to hide. However earnestly you try to embrace the vibe, the hollowness rings louder than the music.
A Tale of Two Neighbours
It’s a thought that has lingered in casual conversations for a while, but an early September afternoon on Roastery Street made it impossible to ignore. The strip — with mushrooming eateries desperate to channel the café-trail charm of holiday destinations — serves up only veneer without flavour or soul. The original Roastery Coffee House remains a safe bet. However, our experience between two adjoining cafés, Kokoy and Curry Crown, both products of social media hype, left us no choice but to document what’s really wrong with Noida’s indiscriminate hospitality hustle.
Whilst seated inside Kokoy on a rainy afternoon, we watched in disbelief as a massive metal garden umbrella from neighbouring Curry Crown came crashing down on a brand-new Volvo EX30 — our review vehicle for the week. It was parked exactly where Kokoy’s staff had directed us, in the paved bay outside the café designed to hold four cars. The heavy metal frame — an unauthorised and unsafe temporary structure placed casually beside the hostess counter — struck the car’s A-pillar and left it damaged instantly.
Both establishments immediately went on the defensive. We were seated at Kokoy, yet the damage had been caused by a structure belonging to Curry Crown. Conveniently, each side denied accountability. The managers pushed blame back and forth, doing their best to evade responsibility. But this wasn’t an act of God. It was negligence, plain and simple, and someone needed to own up. Instead, they chose not to. Requests to speak with the owners were stonewalled with the same refrain: not authorised, not allowed. Eventually, the matter escalated to the point where police intervention became unavoidable.
When the cops arrived and demanded to speak with the owners, Curry Crown’s manager, Sagar Kundan, promptly put Paras Teotia on the line. What followed was a masterclass in duplicity. To the police, Paras assured cooperation and promised to “take responsibility.” To us, he sneered: “It’s hardly any damage. Do what you want, file a complaint.” Here was a man who owned an establishment, authorised an unsafe structure that could have cracked a skull, and yet dismissed the consequences with the arrogance of a gym-bro entrepreneur. This wasn’t a slip in judgment. It was him channelling his inner Noida superhero.
His manager Sagar, who was at the scene was no better — equally odious, and adamant that their unauthorised installation posed no danger. Together, they embodied the ugly, aggressive side of Noida’s hospitality hustle, the kind of encounter that makes you wish you’d never walked in as a guest. For them, accountability was clearly optional.
Kokoy’s manager, Amit Upadhyay, was technically present but entirely absent in spirit. New on the job, he saw no reason to support his guests during an emergency, nor did he think it important to contact his owner. After much coaxing, he finally called the owner, Arun Kuntal — who never spoke to us directly and simply instructed him to “sort it out” at his level. Sorting out’ meant waiving the food bill, even though the damage was likely ten times its value. Hospitality, anyone?
The Hardware Store Mentality
The casual arrogance on display was staggering. When confronted with clear negligence that could easily have injured someone, Mr. Teotia’s response was textbook strong-arm posturing: public promises of cooperation to authorities, followed by private contempt for the victims. Mr. Kuntal, meanwhile, didn’t consider it appropriate to intervene when the incident happened. This wasn’t just poor ethics or a lack of training. It reflected a deeper bankruptcy of character masquerading as business acumen, one that runs through much of the new-money suburban hospitality scene.
What both men failed to grasp is that this wasn’t merely mishandling a situation. It was about public safety. Carelessly installed temporary structures, coupled with a refusal to accept responsibility, pose risks that extend far beyond forgettable food. Can they even manage an on-site emergency? What happens if a glass façade shatters and injures someone? If a chandelier falls? If a guest suffers a severe allergic reaction? You’re left wondering whether these establishments are capable of handling anything beyond curating their next Instagram post.
The larger malaise in Noida’s new-age hospitality is the rise of entrepreneurs who believe running an upmarket café requires the same skills as operating a hardware store. Unlike legacy hospitality, their approach reduces the craft of service to transactional retail, where customer complaints are treated as irritants rather than obligations.
The Cultural Disconnect
For decades, Noida was the pragmatic choice — cheaper than Delhi, more organised than Gurgaon, efficient if not glamorous. The post-COVID café boom represented a chance to add some sheen and soul to this rather middle-class efficiency. Instead, these establishments embody the worst of both worlds: the aggressive attitudes that define Delhi NCR’s rougher edges, combined with the superficial polish of modern consumer culture.
Run by people who represent a toxic synthesis of old attitudes and new pretensions, they channel all the aggression of traditional business culture — wrapped in Edison bulbs and rattan furniture.
The People Problem
The root problem in suburbs like Noida is the people, and it shows up grotesquely in hospitality settings. Much of what appears glamorous in Noida’s food scene — cafés, bars, clubs, pubs — carries the unmistakable quality of a B-grade movie set. Everything feels temporary and staged, lacking the lived-in gravitas of genuine venues.
Walk into a bar like Piano Man or Sidecar in Delhi. Or a pizzeria like Leo’s. Then visit any Noida equivalent, and the difference is immediate. Delhi’s establishments feel authentic, safe, and intentional — built by people who understand hospitality as experience, not just optics. Noida’s versions mimic the aesthetics without the soul, looking the part from a distance but crumbling under scrutiny. For their owners, cafés are just another business — no different from a neighbourhood gym or beauty parlour.
Built For Attention, Not Intention
When appearance takes precedence over substance, when influencer tie-ups create buzz and curated feeds drive engagement but the basics of food and service are ignored, the illusion collapses the moment real experiences consistently disappoint.
The missed opportunity is glaring. Kokoy and Curry Crown, like many others in Noida, could have created genuinely top-class casual dining spaces — blending aesthetic appeal with quality produce and operational excellence. Instead, they rely on misplaced confidence and thinly veiled aggression, riding the wave of new residential towers and office complexes that guarantee a steady stream of first-time customers and Sodexo card holders. This may sustain them for a couple of years, but repeat visits? Those will be few and far between.
The Path Forward
For entrepreneurs in this space, the lesson is clear: hospitality is about people, not pictures. It’s about putting soul into the experience, not pretence. It means creating moments that exceed expectations, building systems that prioritise safety, and fostering a culture where problems are addressed, not deflected.
Accountability isn’t weakness; it’s the foundation of trust. A single negative experience can undo months of positive marketing. Most importantly, hospitality is a long game. Instagram likes won’t save you once the hollowness beneath the surface becomes apparent.
The Broader Implications
Noida’s café scene can either keep coasting on superficial appeal toward inevitable irrelevance, or it can evolve into something eclectic, authentic, and truly worthy of its residents’ ambitions. The choice rests with entrepreneurs, but the verdict will ultimately be delivered by customers.
A café visit shouldn’t involve police reports, ruined property, and utter indifference from those in charge. Kokoy and Curry Crown proved otherwise. Noida’s hospitality may be evolving, but for now, it’s hollow at the heart. Until they get it right, this isn’t hospitality — it’s a hazard, and you enter at your own peril.
Note: The incident took place on 3 September 2025. Police intervention was logged under Event ID P03092508182. Curry Crown’s owner, Pradeep Teotia, has not contacted us since, despite promising a call or meeting the next day. Kokoy’s owner, Arun Kuntal, sent us this message the following day: “I am really sorry about what happened yesterday. It was an unexpected storm, and the umbrella from the neighbour’s side caused the damage, but I agree we should have stood by you better in that moment.” He also called us later to apologise and assured us of a resolution after consulting Mr. Teotia, but that too dissolved into silence.
Accountability lies in actions, not words. Should either of them respond with meaningful action, this article will be updated accordingly.