54 Best Restaurants in Mumbai, India

Set in the middle of the city’s racecourse, Gallops has a classic, consistent, North Indian and 1970s-style "continental" European menu. To book the alfresco section---a rarity in Mumbai---you'll have to call in advance; it's usually kept closed, and opened for special parties or receptions.

A genteel throwback to the continental dishes of the 1950s, '60s, and '70s, Gaylord opened in the 1950s and has consistently fed the city's sense of nostalgia by eschewing faddish culinary crazes and sticking to old-fashioned Indian and European dishes like lobster thermidore; it also has a bakery that sells bread, pastries, and other dainties. There is an opulent air-conditioned section, but you want to sit outside on its pretty patio, fringed with a white-latticed boundary.

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.

Inexpensive, shabby, and frankly a bit of a hole-in-the-wall, Hotel Deluxe (neither a hotel nor deluxe) has long been the default choice of eatery for homesick Keralites. The menu is vast, but tunnel your vision towards the special section; anything on there is bound to be excellent.

Though the name implies something quite different, this restaurant actually serves Pan-Asian food and attracts a mix of couples and families out for a special occasion. A bubbling pond with wooden statues greets customers to an interior decked out with understated Asian accoutrements—bamboos and various Asian scripts on the walls.

Styled as an haute version of a typical Mangalorean home—all red clay and bright green—Konkan is in the Vivanta by Taj hotel (still "Taj President" to taxi drivers). It does all the chow your average home might serve, but it's more refined, with cleaner flavors and elegant presentation (food is served on copper thali plates lined with banana leaves), plus it has the added advantage of being one of the few coastal restaurants to offer a great, if expensive, bottle of wine.

Once bustling Lalbaug was the beating heart of Mumbai's mill lands and center of its radical leftist political culture. The mills have since folded, but the area is still home to a clot of eateries serving excellent Maharashtrian cooking, and among the best is Ladu Samrat, an unfussy, eminently affordable, but rather threadbare restaurant serving homey vegetarian Maharashtrian snacks.

When it defiantly reopened just four days after the first shots of the 2008 terrorist attacks were fired and 10 people were killed, the crowds were so big the police had to shut the place down all over again (the ownership has preserved bullet holes from the attack on its upstairs windows for people to see). Order a bottle of ice-cold Kingfisher beer to wash down the hearty, typical bar food—chicken tikka, french fries, that kind of thing, or go with the Chinese food that is actually the better bet.

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.

Located at ITC's Rama International, this restaurant has plenty of North Indian as well as local Maharashtrian dishes on offer. Get the chef to make you the local special, the meaty naan khaliya, a throwback to the Mughal era. The decor is elegant but unremarkable.

At this airy cafe full of sunlight, you can find comforting breads and French baked goods, as well as an assortment of savory breakfast items. There are branches in Lower Parel and Bandra.

This well-known seafood restaurant attracts the office-lunch crowd as well as packing them in during the evenings. Some of the character was stripped out of the place after it decided to go upscale, and the floor-to-ceiling marble might be a bit much, but the traditional Mangalorean seafood dishes are reliably good.

A short walk from the blue Knesset Eliyahoo synagogue is The Nutcracker, a tiny, pretty vegetarian restaurant with pink and white bougainvillea tumbling down its wooden windows, and mosaic tiled floors. Go for breakfast (or lunch, or dinner), and order any of the delicious egg concoctions.

Rarely packed even on Saturday night, Oh! Calcutta serves the city's best (mustard-heavy) Bengali food in upscale surroundings of dark wood set off by simple black-and-white archival photos from the British Raj. The seafood is exquisite, and if it's all too unfamiliar, defer to the waiters—some of the best in the city—to choose something, based on your specifications.

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 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.

Under the same ownership as Woodside Inn, this restaurant dispenses with the pubby atmosphere to focus on simple, rustic cuisine using local ingredients. The food is excellent and reasonably priced considering how refined it is, and although it'd be nice if it had a wine license—the white interiors, open kitchen, and general atmosphere all scream "wine bar"—the excellent baked goods and mains more than make up for the lack of booze.

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.

India's French influence might be strongest in sunny Pondicherry, on the east coast, but with two Frenchmen at the helm, this tiny crepe joint can provide a taste of it right here in Mumbai (branches have blossomed across Mumbai, including in Bandra and Powai). Try the Méditerranée, with grilled chicken, olive tapenade, mozzarella, and tomatoes, or the Italie, with arugula, a tomato coulis, mozzarella, and oregano, or build your own crepe from an extensive list of ingredients.

Popular with rich Mumbai housewives—who pack the place for lunch during the week—this Italian restaurant helmed by Chef Ritu Dalmia serves gourmet food in a relaxed, tasteful setting. On the top-floor veranda of Good Earth (a designer furniture store), the Tasting Room shares its hosts' penchant for subtle Indian minimalism in bright jewel tones.

Although most of the items on Trishna's seafood menu are of respectable quality, you'd be remiss not to order the much-vaunted butter garlic crab---even if that was all this legendary Kala Ghoda restaurant served, it'd be full year-round. The succulent crab is available in myriad treatments—with Indian and Western spices, green hariyali masala, black (spicier) Hyderabadi masala—and Trishna maintains the quality that's made it a favorite with tourists for more than 30 years.

Granted, Mumbai is not exactly known for its carbonara, so the bar isn't set too high, but Vetro could stack up against Italian food in any moderately sized American city. And if you're in the mood for a break from spicy food, this minimalist chic restaurant is perfect, with its wide variety of salads, pastas, and antipasti.

On the second floor of the Taj Mahal Palace hotel and styled after an upscale but fairly authentic Japanese sushi joint, the wildly expensive Wasabi offers great service, a nice view toward the Gateway of India, and—we cannot emphasize this enough—great sushi. If you've got the cash, try one of the omakase menus (6 to 12 courses), which will take you through the best dishes, from whitefish carpaccio to rock-shrimp tempura to salmon nigiri, depending on what's freshest at the moment.

Opened in 2010, Ziya quickly shot to the very forefront of Indian cuisine, and although other modern Indian restaurants have taken its place at the top of the heap, it still serves really tasty food. Here, traditional Indian flavors receive nouvelle cuisine treatment from chef Vineet Bhatia, the first Indian chef to win Michelin stars.