The Old House

The Verdict

The Old House is an independent modern restaurant occupying a 1920s-era bungalow in the Yadavagiri neighbourhood, north of the main palace area — one of Mysore's first serious chef-driven restaurants to open outside the hotel dining circuit and currently the city's reference for independent dining. The owner is a Chennai-trained chef who moved to Mysore in the late 2010s after stints at Bangalore's fine-dining restaurants and in Goa.

The menu is multi-cuisine with a modern-Continental and pan-Asian anchor — a short Mediterranean section (a mezze plate, a wood-fired pizza programme, a fish of the day), a pan-Asian section (Thai green curry, a tom yum, a ramen bowl at lunch), and a modern-Indian section that includes the restaurant's signature Coorg pork belly (a Karnataka specialty rarely served at this register in Mysore). The menu rotates seasonally and the daily specials are driven by the morning market.

The bungalow is the room — a two-storey colonial-era building with the main dining room on the ground floor (40 covers), a smaller mezzanine for 20, and a garden terrace for another 30 that becomes the preferred space in the cool months. The bar is modest but the wine list is respectable — approximately 35 bottles, mostly Indian (Grover Zampa, Fratelli, Sula) and a small French and Australian selection.

The Old House is the independent alternative to the hotel-dining dominant Mysore scene. It is where the younger diners — the Infosys Mysuru Campus workforce, the Bangalore weekenders — settle in for a longer evening, and its crowd is visibly different from the Royal Orchid properties. For diners who want a chef-driven independent operation rather than a heritage-hotel dining room, it is the Mysore answer.

Why It Works for First Date

The Old House is the Mysore first-date room for couples whose preferred register is an independent modern restaurant rather than a hotel dining room. A converted 1920s bungalow, a chef-driven multi-cuisine menu that runs to Continental and pan-Asian preparations, and a terrace garden that holds the best outdoor dining space in the city during the October-March cool months.

Also in Mysore

For diners planning a broader Mysore itinerary: Tiger Trail offers north indian awadhi at a different register; The Elephant Bar is the alternative for a second-night booking; and Shikari anchors the city's first date map. The full grid is on the Mysore index, and the broader First Date occasion page collects the most relevant peers globally.