It’s 2 am, and the lights inside the iconic red facade of American Express Bakery (AEB) on Byculla’s Mirza Ghalib Road (earlier Clare Road) flicker on. Workers shuffle in alongside Yvan Carvalho. Inside the 8,000 sqft space, the rhythm of the night begins — puff pastries first, their layers of butter and margarine folded with care; then cakes and pastries. Bread, always the finale, is the last to hit the oven. By 9 am, the first batch rolls out to their retail counters; the second follows at 4 pm, every day without fail. “It was in the late 1800s that my grandfather, Francesco Carvalho, came to Bombay from Goa, possibly for better livelihood opportunities, considering Goa was under Portuguese rule,” said Yvan, 53, adding, “We first started on a rented premise on Falkland Road before buying this space and moving here in 1908.” Along with his brothers Emil, 60, and Yohann, 48, Yvan represents the fourth-generation custodian of AEB. As a boy, Yvan would run around the kitchen. During his junior college, he would come every day before classes to help his father, especially during Christmas when plum cake sales soared. Later, determined to understand the business better, he joined catering college and entered AEB full-time in 1993. “We started with only bread before we diversified into cakes and pastries. We were also into wedding catering,” he recalled. The bakery gradually expanded retail operations in the early 1900s, opening branches in Cumbala Hill and Colaba Causeway (now defunct). In the 1930s, Bandra followed, then Santacruz. Today, AEB produces over 60 items, with bread still its star. Around 400 kilograms of flour are used daily — their loaves heading to homes as well as restaurants and clubs across Mumbai, including the Yacht Club and Hotel Sea Palace. The bakery’s name itself has a hint of folklore. There’s a story that they got the name because they supplied to American ships docked in Mumbai. “A Parsi gentleman once told my mother we were among the ship chandlers — providing bread and provisions to vessels coming from the US and travelling east. I am not sure how true it is, but the name has been there since our earliest days,” said Yvan. Through riots and curfews In its over a century of operations, AEB has seen it all — two World Wars, several economic shifts, and more recently, the Covid-19 pandemic. But the Bombay Riots of 1992–93 remain particularly vivid in the Carvalho family’s memory. “Everything was shut,” recalled Yvan. “We continued production, maybe the only bakery doing so. There was rationing, prices were high, but my brother Emil managed to get flour, and I got yeast. Bread was a necessity. Curfew lifted for an hour in the morning and evening, and people queued up outside.” A 400-gram loaf cost Rs 5 then, which was unaffordable for many. “My mother would break loaves in half for those who couldn’t pay,” he added. “You wouldn’t see anyone on the roads, especially after the second riots, which were particularly severe. Muhammad Ali Road was completely shut, but my brother was approached by people who wanted to distribute bread to those who were starving. Times were so tough that we refrained from putting wrappers on the loaves,” Yvan recalled. “We supplied from Cumbala Hill to Santacruz, sometimes donating bread to Ashadaan, the orphanage nearby. Until about ten years ago, people would still come to thank us for those days,” added Yohann. The left wall of the bakery still bears a bullet mark — a scar from that time. “There was a military patrol, someone threw bottles, and they shot a man down,” said Yvan. The second major test came decades later with Covid-19. “Thankfully, our workers didn’t leave the city, and we managed to keep running through every lockdown phase,” he said with quiet pride. The sourdough tradition “Back in the day, it was entirely a sourdough business,” Yvan said. “It’s become a trendy word now, but we had four huge tubs — one and a half times the size of a bathtub — where we made a starter and fed the dough for 24 hours. We’d keep a bit from each batch to begin the next.” He laughed recalling a particular incident: “Once during prohibition, the excise people raided us because of the aroma. They thought we were brewing alcohol! Slightly over-fermented dough gives off that yeasty, alcohol-like smell.” When commercial yeast became available, AEB gradually phased out those tubs. Yet, sourdoughs and artisanal breads remain central to their repertoire. “We introduced Oat Crackers and Rustic Oat Bread in the 1990s, when people began talking about health. We were making multigrain, rye and honey wheat breads long before pre-mixes came in.” Each day of the week, a different artisanal loaf still emerges from the ovens, from rustic oats on Mondays and Fridays to rye on Wednesdays and sundried tomato and basil on Saturdays. Calling AEB “ahead of its times” isn’t an exaggeration. “We introduced biscotti to Bombay in 1997, much before anyone even knew the word, and croissants in 1995, long before coffee shops arrived,” said Yvan. “We travelled, family came back from abroad with recipe books, and we tried everything new.” Like most bakeries of its era, AEB once used wood-fired brick ovens and a tall chimney. “Around 1985, new environmental norms forced us to switch, so we moved to gas ovens,” he said. Yohann added, “When we broke the old ovens, neighbours bought the bricks — they were from the early 1900s, and the quality was incredible.” A living landmark Over the years, their patrons have included actress Ratna Pathak Shah and Helen, who loves their Pois, and food chronicler Kunal Vijaykar, who still drops in for puff pastries. But many of AEB’s anecdotes, Yohann admits, have been lost over time. “Just this week I learnt we were one of the initial members of the Hotel and Restaurant Association, which was among the first in India and was founded by J.R.D. Tata,” he said, adding, “My grandfather died when my father was only 16, so a lot of information went with him. I wish we could document everything.” The family credits much of AEB’s survival to their grandmother Bertha, who took over the business after her husband’s death and even shifted her residence above the bakery for convenience. “In an era dominated by unions and men, it wasn’t easy for a Goan woman to run a labour-heavy business,” said Yvan. “Hats off to her — she kept everything going.” In the 1970s, an uncle coined the bakery’s tagline, “We knead your needs”, and created the baker logo. More than a century on, the red building in Byculla stands steady, its ovens glowing as they did in the early 1900s. Inside, the same rhythm continues: the hum of mixers, the folding of dough, the first whiff of freshly baked loaves. From the quiet pre-dawn hours to the aroma drifting across the street, American Express Bakery remains a living slice of old Bombay — kneading, quite literally, the city’s needs for over a hundred years.
