व्यंजन
Two distinct eating cultures overlap. One is domestic and communal — a Koli, Agri, East Indian, Bene Israel or Parsi household kitchen with rules about what is cooked on which day. The other is the mill-and-station street kitchen invented in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to feed shift workers standing up, in minutes, for small money. The second is far better known and grew directly out of the first.
Koli fish curryMaslyache kalvanमांसाहारीMain
Bangda, surmai, paplet or halwa simmered in a ground paste of fresh coconut, red chilli, garlic and coriander seed, soured with kokum and finished thin enough to be poured over rice. No tomato, no onion browning, and it is cooked in under twenty minutes because the fish landed that morning.
कहाँ चखें: The koliwada eateries at Versova, Worli and Sassoon Dock.
Bombil fryमांसाहारीStarter
Fresh Bombay duck pressed in semolina and rice flour with chilli and turmeric and shallow-fried until the crust holds a fish that has almost no structure of its own. The dried version, sukka bombil, is a different food entirely — roasted over a flame and torn into a chutney with garlic and chilli.
कहाँ चखें: Fort and Girgaon lunch homes; Sassoon Dock in the morning.
Sol kadhiशाकाहारीDrink or finish
Kokum extract in thin coconut milk with pounded garlic and green chilli, pale pink and served cold at the end of the meal. It is digestive rather than decorative, and a fish thali here is considered unfinished without it.
Agri-style chickenAgri kombdi rassaमांसाहारीMain
Country chicken in a thin, fiery gravy built on a garlic-heavy Agri masala with roasted dry coconut, served with rice bhakri. The Agri kitchen uses more garlic and less aromatic spice than any of its neighbours, which is what distinguishes it from the Malvani chicken further south.
कहाँ चखें: Agri and koli-style khanavals along the Panvel–Alibag and Uran roads.
Vaal or birdi usalशाकाहारीMain
Field beans sprouted, skinned and cooked into a loose curry with goda-style spice and coconut. It is the Agri and Kunbi monsoon protein for the weeks when boats are not going out.
Prawn koliwadaमांसाहारीStarter
Prawns in a red, ajwain-scented batter, deep-fried and served with raw onion and lime. Named for the Sion Koliwada neighbourhood where the preparation was popularised, and now on menus a thousand kilometres away with no idea what a koliwada is.
Khara bangda and sukat chutneyमांसाहारीSide
Salted mackerel rinsed and fried, and pounded dried shrimp with garlic, chilli and a little coconut. Both are monsoon food — what a fishing household eats when the sea is shut.
Vada pavशाकाहारीStreet
A spiced potato ball in gram-flour batter inside a split pav with dry garlic chutney and a fried chilli. It was engineered for the mill and station crowds of the 1960s and 1970s — hot food, one hand, no plate, no cutlery, no waiting — and it outlived the mills that created the demand.
कहाँ चखें: The stalls outside Dadar and Thane stations, and Aaram near CSMT.
Pav bhajiशाकाहारीStreet
Mixed vegetables mashed on a flat griddle with butter and a distinct blend, eaten with buttered pav. It is generally traced to the mill-district and market food trade, where the unsold vegetables of the day and a griddle already hot were what a cook had to work with at midnight.
Bottle-masala meat curry and fugiasमांसाहारीMain
The core East Indian Catholic meal — mutton or chicken in a dark curry whose entire character comes from the household's own bottle masala, eaten with fugias, soft fried dough balls leavened with toddy or yeast. Made for feast days, weddings and Christmas rather than for a weekday.
Dhansak and patra ni machhiमांसाहारीMain
Parsi cooking's two most recognisable plates — mutton with several lentils, vegetables and a sweet-sour spice mix served over browned rice, and pomfret coated in green coconut-coriander chutney and steamed in a banana leaf. Dhansak is not, in Parsi households, a celebration dish; it is traditionally eaten on Sunday and after the fourth day of mourning.
कहाँ चखें: Britannia & Co. and the older Irani establishments in Fort and Byculla.
Berry pulao and sali botiमांसाहारीMain
Rice with meat and barberries, and mutton in a sweet-sour tomato gravy under a heap of fried potato straws. The barberry is imported and is the clearest surviving Iranian thread in the Parsi kitchen.
कहाँ चखें: Britannia & Co., Ballard Estate.
MalidaशाकाहारीRitual
A Bene Israel offering of roasted flattened rice with grated coconut, sugar, cardamom and fruit, made for the ceremony of thanksgiving and vow-fulfilment addressed to Eliyahu Hannabi, the prophet Elijah. It is food that exists only as part of a liturgy.
Ukadiche modakशाकाहारीDessert
Steamed rice-flour dumplings pleated by hand around coconut and jaggery, made in enormous numbers for Ganesh Chaturthi. The count of pleats and the thinness of the skin are the two things a household is judged on.
Tandalachi bhakri with kalvanशाकाहारी और मांसाहारीEveryday
Rice flatbread patted out by hand and cooked on a griddle, eaten with fish curry or with a vegetable. It is what the coast eats when nobody is watching, and it does not travel because it stiffens within an hour.
Brun maska and mawa cakeशाकाहारीBreakfast
A hard-crusted bun split and buttered, dunked in strong sweet Irani chai, and a dense cardamom-scented milk-solid cake from the same counter. The Irani cafe was Bombay's neutral ground — a place with cheap food, marble tables and no rules about who sat where.
कहाँ चखें: Kyani & Co., B. Merwan & Co. and Yazdani Bakery.
मुख्य आहार
Boiled rice and rice bhakriFish, fresh in season and dried through the monsoonCoconut, scraped and as milkPavDal and sprouted pulses in the cultivator kitchen
मिठाइयाँ
Ukadiche modakPatoli — rice and coconut steamed in a turmeric leafKuswar, the East Indian and Goan-descended Christmas platter of kulkuls, marzipan and guava cheeseMawa cakeShrikhand and puran poli, from the plateau kitchen that settled here
स्ट्रीट फ़ूड
Vada pavMisal pavPav bhajiBhelpuri and sev puriRagda patticeFrankie and the toasted sandwichKanda bhaji in the rain
पेय
Kokum sarbatSol kadhiNeera and toddy from the coastal palmsIrani chai, and the small glass known everywhere as cutting