Shiva Kandukuri, Teju Ashwini's Nawab Cafe directed by Pramod Harsha is releasing on 20 February 2026. The film attracted the attention of all when it was titled Chai Wala and later it was changed to Nawab Cafe due to the pressure from the Censor Board. Let us find out what Nawab Cafe offered to movie lovers.
Nawab Cafe story revolves around a youngster, son of a tea stall owner decides to go to America and his he deals with the evolving developments.
Raja (Shiva Kandukuri), son of Ranganath (Rajeev Kanakala), Parvati (Mani Chandana), who runs Nawab Cafe decides to go to US along with his friend Scissors (Raj Kumar Kasi Reddy) after clearing B.Tech with great difficulty.
However, this leads to surprising developments in his life. What are those developments, what role Sakhi (Teju Ashwini), Kumar (Chaitanya Krishna) and others play form the interesting part.
Shiva Kandukuri perfomed his role in a realistic manner. He is fine who leads happily and he came up with good emotions and expressions in the sentiment scenes.
Teju Ashwini performed the role of the female lead accordingly. She came up with a decent performance but didn't get much scope to show her acting talent.
Rajeev Kanakala is good in the role of the father. The role is tailor made for him but he added value to the role with his expressions, emotions and dialogue delivery bringing his experience to the fore. Mani Chandana came up with a decent performance in the role of the mother.
Chaitanya Krishna played the typical role with our any deviations. He showed good expressions and emotions at times in a subtle manner. Raj Kumar Kasi Reddy is ok in the role of the friend. But his role is not used fully to generate humour. Vadlamani Srinivas is good in his role and so did other actors.
Nawab Cafe story is penned by Pramod Harsha. He started the story with narrating the history of the cafe and from then on the narration assumes monotonous and regular manner.
The story has shades of many earlier hit films and mostly Dhanush's Idli Kadai. After the predictable elements, the first half ends with intense emotional scenes setting the stage for the second half.
The second half continued in the same vein with uni dimensional Screenplay. With no real twists and turns and similar emotions, slow narration and outdated treatment but ended up with emotional finishing.
The songs tuned by Prashanth R Vihari are situational and are in sync with the story. He made a strong impact with his background music.
The editing of Pawan narava left a lot to be desired. There are many scenes in the film that slowed the pace of the narration. Eshwar Penti with his Cinematography gave a realistic feel to the narration. He used the camera angles and colour combinations to give a natural look. Dialogues are touchy and emotional. Production values are good.
Altogether, Nawab Cafe is a typical emotional drama. Pramod Harsha came up with romantic and emotional drama in the backdrop of a tea cafe. The film has nothing new and the story resembled of many earlier hit films. His screenplay and direction followed a familiar trope and lacked novel elements. But the father-son bond, the connection with Nawab cafe and the emotional drama in the key scenes are impressive. Considering all these aspects, Cinejosh goes with a 2.5 rating for Nawab Cafe.