Wikipedia tells us:
The India Coffee Houses were started by the Coffee Board in early 1940s, during British rule. In the mid 1950s the Board closed down the Coffee Houses, due to a policy change. The thrown-out workers then took over the branches, under the leadership of the communist leader A. K. Gopalan and renamed the network as Indian Coffee House. The first Indian Coffee Workers Co-Operative Society was founded in Bangalore on August 19, 1957. The first Indian Coffee House was opened in New Delhi on October 27, 1957. Gradually, the Indian Coffee House chain expanded across the country.
And about ICH and Kerala:
Kerala has the largest number of Indian Coffee Houses. Advocate T. K. Krishnan, a Communist Leader of Thrissur and Nadakkal (N. S.) Parameswaran Pillai, or "Coffee House Pillai" the State Secretary of the India Coffee Board Labour Union and a thrown-out employee of ICH were the founders of ICHs in Kerala. The first Indian Coffee House of Kerala was started in Thrissur in 1958. It was also the fourth ICH in the country. It was inaugurated by A. K. Gopalan on March 8, 1958.There is also an alternative history book about the ICH movement, in Malayalam, the regional language of Kerala - Coffee Housinte Katha or History of Coffee House by Nadaakkal Parameswaran Pillai. This is the only published written history of ICH movement in any language.
Most Indian Coffee House's look the same in the late afternoons - dim, and visited only by the pilgrim. There is little debate about their efficient service and amazing coffee.
But they don't look the same in a Barista/CCD/Costa sense. Most of them have associated with them, stories and myths of communists and writers and intellectuals and architects and stoners.
One of the stories, repeated but never really confirmed, concerns Booker winner Yann Martel who spent his time at the Napier Zoo in Thiruvananthapuram, watching animals while he researched the Life of Pi. Some parts of the book were apparently written in the Indian Coffee House located opposite the zoo.
The cheap food to munch with your coffee is a fringe benefit.
Something that I have never eaten in an ICH outside Kerala is the mutton omlette, quite simply an omlette that is rolled up to hide the filling of chopped fried mutton. It is by far my favourite food item at an ICH. But the one on M G Road in Bangalore is a great place to go for that slightly late Sunday breakfast when you want to eat scrambled eggs and mutton cutlets and dunk cold coffee till you burst.
If you intend to visit Thiruvantnhapuram, there a few of these Indian Coffee Houses to pick from. Twelve at the last count. One of them is located at the Thampanoor Bus Stand and is an architectural oddity. It is shaped like a spindle and a spiral runs inside, along the circumference of the building on which the tables await diners. Most people are sipping coffee at thirty degrees to the ground. As I said, quite odd.
Another spectacular one is located at Shangumugham Beach, and every table is sea-facing!
These photos are from a nondescript ICH near the University. In the basement of a shopping arcade where Pizza Corner occupies the prime spot.
When I am in Delhi and looking for cheap coffee and munchies, I recall the India Coffee House in Connaught Place, located on the roof of a tall building that overlooks Regal Cinema, and infested by monkeys. Sadly it has been shut down, and I do not think there is another that is quite the same in South Delhi.
