LastHouse: By The Lake

Durgam Cheruvu Lake is to Hyderabad what Central Park is to New York, and LastHouse has capitalised on that fact with gleeful audacity. The result of that freewheeling entrepreneurial decision is a café that somehow manages to pull off the impossible: great views and good coffee that doesn’t taste like it was brewed yesterday. Actually, that’s a massive understatement. LastHouse doesn’t just do good coffee. It does great coffee. The beans are all robusta, sourced straight from a 400-acre estate in Sakleshpura, in the neighbouring state of Karnataka. This happens to be very much the point of the entire venture – signboards at the coffee station inform me that robusta, incidentally, is a a more ‘climate-smart’ coffee able to withstand higher temperatures, and LastHouse is one of the few places that exclusively serves robusta over arabica, its stressier cousin. 

After all that, the coffee’d better be good. And it is. The Vietnamese Iced Coffee gets the strong coffee to sweet milk ratio just right. The Strawberry Mazagran (coffee with lemon and strawberry) is fantastic in summer, and the Salted Popcorn Caramel Frappe – one of the more decadent items on the menu – is a genuine must-try. If you’re looking for an elevated classic, the Last House Special Cappuccino’s got it down pat.Surprisingly, the food menu is imbued with a personality of its own, and doesn’t fall into the category of café food that entails dry reheated bready nonsense that tastes absolutely mediocre. Sandwiches taste fresh, especially the Focaccia Jalapeño Chicken and the Mushroom Grilled Cheese. The Podi Glazed Chicken’s divine. Even the oddly named ‘Excellent’ Mezze Platter does indeed live up to its name, and comes with a black olive hummus, smoked baba ghanoush, and amazingly crisp falafel. The bakery’s similarly well-equipped. Popular items include the cinnamon bun and the chocolate cake. 

The space itself feels a little bit like a fancy college canteen. In truth, it used to be founder Naina Polavarapu’s family shed, but even now, it retains an airiness that’s very welcome, and very homely. The spirit of conscious consumption’s everywhere – not just in the café’s mission to support the cultivation of robusta, but also in the interiors – in the mango tree that’s fashioned into a natural canopy, and in the furniture that’s made from fallen trees.