Mumbai (Bombay) and Maharashtra Restaurants

As Mumbai grows exponentially, so do its restaurants. Among Indian food you'll find kebabs and tandoori food—meat, bread, cottage cheese, and vegetables cooked inside a clay oven. These dishes, often found on menus and served with Mughlai (a variety of Muslim cuisine) and Punjabi cuisine, are by far the most popular food in town. Also popular, and closely related to Mughlai food are the typically meat-heavy dishes from the North-West Frontier, the area of undivided India that's partly in modern-day Pakistan. Another dish likely to pop up on menus is Gujarati vegetarian thalis—combination platters that are a little oilier than those from elsewhere in India. You may also encounter some Jain food, which is also vegetarian but cooked without root vegetables, such as onions and garlic. Jains try to avoid all destruction of life, and eating such vegetables destroys both the entire plant and any microorganisms that might be living on it. Seafood from the Konkan coast—from Maharashtra south through Goa all the way to Mangalore, in Karnataka—is also a favorite in Mumbai.

Authentic South Indian vegetarian food—dosas (fried, crepelike pancakes), idlis (steamed rice cakes), wadas (also spelled vadas; savory fried, and often flavored, lentil-flour doughnuts), and simple, light thalis (combination platters)—is a city staple. The city has hundreds of fast-food, piping-hot-idli-crispy-dosa restaurants run by the Manglorean Shetty community, which is known for their proficiency in this cuisine. Food in such restaurants is generally clean (the restaurants may be less so), quick, cheap, and tasty.

Even if you find yourself in one of the many average, cookie-cutter restaurants in town, you're unlikely to have a truly terrible meal. They tend to produce competently prepared, not overly authentic Punjabi dishes that taste the same wherever you go—chicken tikka, yellow dal, butter chicken, fried fish, vegetable pulau(a rice preparation). Sometimes such places throw in a few token Continental dishes, such as Russian salad (a sweet, mayo-heavy concoction) or vegetables in béchamel sauce, but these are rarely worth sampling.

Mumbai is also known for its chic restaurants and Western-style pubs. It is a city where you can get not only great meals, but can taste all sorts of cuisines—Continental, authentic Chinese, Italian, Thai, Lebanese, and Mexican. There is a wealth of Chinese eateries offering either lower-end, fiery Indian-Chinese, or fancier, more authentic Chinese. Such restaurants that focus on a particular cuisine tend to appear most to young spenders and tourists.

Many Bombay restaurants are pricey by Indian standards, but there are plenty of tasty bargains that will leave your taste buds and your wallet equally satisfied. Many hotels have good restaurants and all-night "coffee shops" that serve full meals. With Mumbai's approximately two-dozen upscale hotels are 24-hour coffee shops that serve simple meals from multicuisine menus in pleasing, but expensive (up to $50 per head per meal) rooms. Many of these hotels have Chinese, Continental, and Indian food restaurants, too. Some of the food is unremarkable and the stylings mildly repetitive—as they say in Hindi: uchcha dukan, pheeka pakwan, the loftier the establishment the more insipid the food. But the meals are hygienic and wholesome, and the service pleasant. The restaurants are comfortable, too; a refreshing break from Mumbai's humid, crowded streets or a hot afternoon of sightseeing. That said, a few of Mumbai's top hotels, among them the Hyatt, J. W. Marriott, and the Grand Maratha, put on exquisite buffet brunches that are a good value. The range and quality of the food makes dining at such places a memorable experience.

With Mumbai's traffic becoming more intolerable day by day it makes sense to explore the restaurant choices closer to your hotel. The geography of Mumbai is such that the concentration of hotels are in the northern suburb of Juhu as well as near the airport (Andheri) and in south Mumbai. These days there are loads of restaurants to choose from in Juhu and Andheri, and south Mumbai has always had plenty of compelling choices. On the other hand the northern suburb of Bandra has innumerable small restaurants offering many kinds of cuisine, including Japanese or Lebanese or great biryanis (rice cooked with meat). Menus are diverse and meal prices low. For the adventurous, a Bandra food expedition, about 45-50 minutes by taxi (outside traffic hours) from south Mumbai or Juhu and Andheri, can be worthwhile.

Bombay Dress Code

Bombay-wallahs (dwellers) generally dress for dinner. They aren't formal, but they are usually well-turned out. Shorts and a grungy look are not acceptable except at cafés.

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