6 Best Restaurants in Mumbai, India

Indian food is often perceived to be a monolith of spicy curries and tandoori chicken, but for those looking to shatter these snap judgments, Bombay Canteen is the place to go. In a brilliant effort to champion the sort of ingredients that rarely make it into restaurant dishes, executive chef Hussain Shahzad and its late culinary director Floyd Cardoz (once chef of New York restaurant Bombay Bread Bar) have wended their way around the country, subsuming ingredients like rat tail radish and colocasia roots into a playful menu with a global edge.

Chef Niyati Rao builds Ekaa's menu around India's seasonal bounty, with each dish named after its primary ingredient like "Corn" or "Fried Chicken." The results are dishes that creatively expand on the primary ingredient with added flavors and textures, like fried chicken with soy pickle, egg yolk jam, and fermented cauliflower. Cocktails at Ekaa toe a similar line, thanks to the bar manager who comes up with delicious drinks like Petrichor, a monsoon-inspired melange of mezcal, coconut vermouth, gooseberry, and calcium stone.

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.

Owner Aditi Dugar and chef Prateek Sadhu, alumni of the Culinary Institute of America and a rapidly rising star in the Indian culinary landscape, comb the country for intriguing indigenous ingredients and make them the heroes in prix-fixe progressive menus that change every fortnight. Chef Sadhu's stints at Alinea, Noma, Le Bernardin, and French Laundry may have been the seed for his degustation menus, but the bedrock of all his dishes is staunchly Indian, albeit in a clean, pared-down way.

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.