3 Best Restaurants in CST and Environs, Mumbai

Badshah does one thing and one thing very well: the falooda, a felicitous coupling of silky vermicelli noodles with ice cream and black basil seeds, all of which is steeped in a colorful bath of rose and khus syrup. The décor is nothing to write home about, but if you can, make a beeline for the air-conditioned section upstairs.

This no-frills eating establishment used to sit across a tank (Gibbet’s Pond) which was once the stage for the city’s grisliest public hangings. The fifth-generation owners believe it to be one of Mumbai’s earliest eating establishments, but whether it is or isn’t, their trademark dish---puri bhaji (spiced vegetables scooped up with fried bread)---has certainly stayed consistently tasty over the decades. Its clientele includes everyone from Uber drivers to powerful city politicians.

With its whitewashed walls and bright blue decorative highlights, Parsi Dairy Farm is eminently Instagramable and influencer-friendly, but you should go for its creamy kulfis, its candy floss–esque sutarfeni, and its adorable milk mithai, fashioned into the shape of fish. It’s also more than a century old, and run by four generations of the same family—in short, it’s a Mumbai icon.