13 Best Restaurants in Juhu, Bandra, and the Western Suburbs, Mumbai

This is the Mumbai outpost of Delhi’s award-winning Indian Accent, known for its contemporary twists to canonical Indian food. Chef Manish Malhotra refreshes the menu every season, offering vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, and meat-based tasting menus, as well as a special brunch menu and one for "family feasts." The food is as theatrical and fun as ever.

Serving a whimsical, excellently executed menu of dishes inspired by the Catholic-dominated state of Goa, O'Pedro simultaneously pays homage to its Portuguese antecedents. Go at dinnertime to avoid the clatter of the patrons who descend upon the restaurant for their lunch break from the nearby offices and to enjoy seeing the wood-fired oven lit up.

This Bandra West restaurant offers an intriguing tryst with regional pan-Indian flavors, the kind that rarely feature on restaurant menus in the city. Nurse a drink at the bar downstairs and then make your way upstairs to the romantic mezzanine floor; it sits chockablock with vintage photographs, wooden furniture, and candelabras on each table.

Ideal for long, lazy, tea-inspired meals, the Teahouse has a boggling variety of teas for the connoisseur. Go for the languorous lunches and stay for the charming, old-fashioned décor. Coffee drinkers aren't ignored either, and have the arduous task of choosing between a South Indian-style filter coffee or a French press coffee. A few doors down, Sancha Tea Boutique sells pretty tea-related things that make excellent gifts.

At this Mumbai outpost of Dubai’s Michelin-starred fine-dining restaurant, a mind-boggling variety of vegetables get a global interpretation while staying undergirded by Indian flavors. The restaurant channels vegetables such as avocado and baby corn, as well as more unassuming ingredients such as drumstick, sea buckthorn, and parsnip, into a 14-course degustation menu.

Bandra's beautiful people—Bollywood stars, expats, creative types—flock to this hip, casual café on tony Pali Hill. The laid-back style, plentiful outdoor seating, and excellent quality food more than make up for the fact that the bagels are just round bread, not the standard boiled-then-baked variety. Order a whole-wheat bagel with Goan-style chicken sausage and cream cheese, and one of the wonderful seasonal fruit smoothies, as you lounge on one of the rattan couches.

Folding in an ensemble cast of underrated Indian dishes like Manipuri black rice and kharonda fruit into its menu, Bawri prides itself on wood and charcoal cooking that fumes the food with dark, sweet, earthen flavors. Among their most popular dishes are the stuffed gucchi mushrooms, the smoked mutton chops, and the jackfruit biryani.

For decades the food stalls in front of Elco Market have been serving some of the best—and cleanest—vegetarian street food Mumbai has to offer, and they were doing so well that the owners were able to open this two-floor restaurant inside the market, offering essentially the same food. One of Mumbai's most iconic experiences is standing by the pani puri vendor, as he stuffs boiled potato, sprouts, mint-fresh water, and sweet chutney into an eggshell-thin sphere of fried flour and hands it to you in a plate woven together with leaves.

Suburbanites love this seafood joint near Juhu Beach, which compares favorably with the coastal restaurants in Fort. The Phoenix Mall branch is sleek and modern, while the original Vile Parle location is a bit tacky and dated but better regarded (as most originals are).

There are other branches across Mumbai, but they are all in the northern suburbs.

A Mumbai outpost of the Michelin-starred London original, this Bandra haunt is worth a visit for those who absolutely must have a fancy Chinese dinner. Even then, it's likely only worth dining here if you're in Bandra already.

You’ll have to navigate Bandra’s warren of lanes on foot to reach The Lovefools---the perfect way to prime your appetite for Chef Sarita Pereira’s experimental cooking (her influences swing from Scandinavian to Japanese to Indian). The bonus is that you can sit in air-conditioned comfort in an old-fashioned heritage bungalow in Bandra or eat alfresco in its charming little courtyard, a rare pleasure in Mumbai.

Quality European bistro food—and the possibility of seeing a Bollywood star or two—draws suburbanites as well as townies on date night to this converted one-story restaurant in Bandra, but it's the romantic, old-school charm of its interior that keeps them coming back for more. While the rest of Mumbai runs headlong into the future, this place harks back to Bombay's bungalow roots with simple wooden tables, wrought-iron railings, and exposed brick.

This unpretentious restaurant in Bandra Reclamation—a scenic, walkable section of Bandra—has a classic nouvelle cuisine menu and a simple rooftop terrace. It gets crowded on weekends, so be sure to make a reservation, preferably for the terrace, where the cover of giant palm trees somehow blocks out the cacophony from noisy Chapel Road below.