Arpita Khan Sharma’s Mercii sparks outrage over 8,500 pasta prices

Mercii, Arpita Khan Sharma’s European fine-dining restaurant in Mumbai’s Santacruz West and Khar belt, has become a talking point for one reason above all others: the prices. A viral menu has put its Truffle Pasta on Wheel at 8,500, its Herb Crusted Lamb Loin at 10,000 and a Dom Pérignon Rosé imported from France at about 2 lakh, pushing the restaurant into the center of Mumbai’s latest luxury dining debate.

The restaurant occupies about 9,000 sq ft at 81 Crest and was launched in late 2024 as a polished, celebrity-backed destination built around contemporary European cuisine. The dining room’s standout design detail is a ceiling and LED canopy that shifts from daytime brightness to a nighttime mood, reinforcing the kind of theatrical presentation that increasingly defines high-end hospitality in the city.

Mercii is co-owned by Arpita Khan Sharma with Ketul and Gaurav Parikh, along with Anuj and Vicky Chugh of Richboyz Hospitality and Richboyz Entertainment. The name is presented as the French word for thank you, fitting the restaurant’s hospitality-first branding and its stated aim of celebrating life’s finest moments. Launch coverage also placed familiar faces in the room, including Malaika Arora and Seema Sajdeh, adding to the restaurant’s celebrity draw from the start.

The backlash over the menu has been intense because the prices sit well beyond ordinary Indian restaurant spending and move Mercii into a tier where the bill becomes part of the message. In Mumbai, luxury dining has long relied on location, rarity, service and atmosphere to justify a premium, but Mercii’s menu has sharpened the question of how much of that premium comes from the plate itself and how much comes from the names attached to the business, the social-media visibility and the celebrity crowd it attracts.

Arpita Khan Sharma has framed the restaurant as a personal project rooted in family. She has said the venture was inspired by her family’s deep-rooted love for food and togetherness, a theme that gives Mercii a softer origin story than its headline-grabbing price tags suggest. But the public conversation has settled on the numbers, and for now the 8,500 pasta is doing more to define the restaurant than any description of its European menu.