Articles > Spice Invaders

Like no other city in India, Mumbai finds expression in its streets. Mumbaikans fight, dance, defecate, procreate and protest in the tangled confluence of roads that wind north through this spur of land to the northern suburbs from the old-man presence of the Gateway of India (the Marble arch built by Prince Albert) at Mumbai’s tip.

Visit during monsoon season and you’ll soon realise just how remarkable such levels of industry are. It’s 7am in the spaghetti confusion of the streets of the Muslim quarter – an area overarched by the vast, crumbling overpass of Mohammad Ali road – and we’re already battling slicing rains and crazy-making humidity, our ankles coagulated in a soup of mud.

Despite the inhospitable conditions, and the early hour, everywhere around us Mumbaikans are going about their lives in a circus maximus of noise and tumult: poorly tethered goats range around, the street hawkers who colonise the shady nearby thieves’ market are setting up their wares, and eager workers throng the chipped green Formica tables and simmering cooking pots of Valibhai Payawallah (goat-leg seller), a generations-old breakfast café that’s justifiably famed in these parts.

If you thought the full-works ‘English’ was the last word in hearty starts to the day, think again. For 20 rupees (about 30p), Akbar, whose great-grandfather picked up the recipe from an Iranian cook he shared a steamy hotel kitchen with in the Raj days, crouches shoeless on his worktop to serve us a ‘bara handi’ breakfast: a combination of lavishly rich tender mutton (goat) stews, mutton-marrow dahls and other robust gloop made from the hallowed goat. Slow-cooked overnight in nine stainless steel pots sealed with wood, the bara handi’s thick ochre juices are mopped up with biscuit-sweet chapattis crisp with ghee. This is not one for the delicately disposed however, or for those stale from late night on the Kingfishers. ‘In Iran they use every part of the goat: eyes, ears, nose, tongue… here we prefer the brain,’ Akbar winningly advises. Obviously immune to bouts of hungover dry heaving, Richard Gere is one of Akbar’s fondly remembered customers (Gerree in Akbar parlance; apparently he swept in during one of his many spiritual pilgrimages to India).

However, Mumbai’s international celebrity endorsements don’t come more bizarre than Richard Branson and Prince Charles’ fondness for Mumbai’s lunchbox delivery boys – or ‘dabbawallahs’. Charles, in a nod to either colonialism or British eccentricity, invited two of their number to his and Camilla’s recent nuptials; and Branson has conducted studies into their inscrutable methodologies (Forbes recently awarded the dabbawallahs a performance rating on a par with blue chip firms such as Motorola). With insect industry, the dabbawallahs conduct what can only be described as a daily miracle.

The tiffin tradition began in the late nineteenth century and still thrives, mainly due to the bafflingly various dietary requirements of the culturally and religiously diverse Mumbaikans. Each tiffin box, similar to a paint tin in appearance, is daubed with markings specific to each group of dabbawallahs, determining the box’s provenance and destination. The tiffin has compartments for rice, dhal, parathas and curd, and passes through at least half a dozen pairs of hands en route to its owner, with fewer than one in a million of the boxes going missing. Every day a network of a hundred of these stocky Maharastrans (traditionally hailing from Pune, to the south-west of Mumbai), deliver 175,000 freshly cooked meals from wives in suburban kitchens to offices in the downtown area, their 6ft-long wooden trays balanced precariously atop the flattened caps typical of their region. Catch hundreds of pairs of scurrying dabbawallah legs collecting tiffins from the suburban trains at Victoria Terminus from late morning weekdays.

If to drink deeper of the unsanitised stew of Mumbai, the sweet and gaudy mysteries of the hazy bazaars north of the Mumbai’s Fort have to be experienced. The vast Crawford market (officially named Mahatma Phule Market) is ripe with flies, glistening fish and arresting smells. Part divine (the gothic exterior, with bas reliefs by Rudyard Kipling’s father, the sunshine spread of mango varietals and spice stalls); part dank demimonde (the spectre of mutton testicles hanging limply from a stick, or man attempting to sell you a goats head will perhaps never be forgotten), the raw chaos of Crawford is intoxicating. We sampled tropical fruits such as fragrant guava and sweet pomegranates – their skins prized open like fresh wounds – and stocked up on pungent spice blends, saffrons and garam masala (which translates as hot mix). Braver gastronomes can risk the unappetising-looking dried oily fish (often mackerel) typical of this region of the Indian subcontinent and typically used in chutneys, or as a flavourful and highly typical ‘poor man’s meal’ mixed with rice.

Pirouetting to the top of the feeding chain, our next gastro port-of-call couldn’t have been more of a contrast. Much like throwing oneself headfirst onto the bonfire of the vanities, Indigo restaurant is the favoured prowling ground for over-caffeinated middle class Mumbaikans. We visited this restaurant-bar – tastefully decorated in vanillas and terracottas and soundtracked by covers bands playing an aural Radox of jazz reinterpretations of Western classics – for its white-hot ‘Sunday brunch’. Industrialists, Bollywood wannabes and fashion types attack each other with conversation over sangria and sparkling new world wine (Indian wine best avoided), and picking over a heaving spread of Mediterranean-influenced tapas: from Indian mozzarellas to bok choi, plump Italian olives and chicken with glazed palm hearts. Whilst it’s a happy opportunity to sample the European fusion fare that’s swiftly gaining popularity in Mumbai, Indigo’s after-taste might linger for the wrong reasons, notably once you step outside to the sudden stench of blocked sewers and heart-breakingly filthy children dragging themselves through nearby streets.

Seeking an antidote to such anodyne high living, we craved some substantial Indian fare, served up at the sort of establishment where dishes are washed weekly. Querulous tourists who consume themselves in paroxysms of fear over catching stomach bugs from fruit skins and douse their extremities in Evian before dining (we all know them) are missing out on much of the best that the city has to offer. Street food – in all of its glorious and aromatic forms – defines edible Mumbai, especially the delicate signature dish of pani-puri: tiny, golden gram flour puffs, which are served up at every roadside in central Mumbai. Crisp from bubbling oil, the pani-puri’s frail crust gives way immediately as you eat it, flooding your mouth with cool coriander-spiked ice water and sweet tamarind. As much about theatre as snacking, the trick, we learn, is to devour pani-puri as quickly as your pani-wallah can deftly construct them, and before their rich juices spill down to your wrist.

Other popular roadside snacks include ‘wet’ and ‘dry’ bhel, which to the uninitiated look a little like Rice Crispies mixed with onion and bite-sized pieces of bhaji. Meat kebabs are also swift gaining favour as a quick snack on the move (amongst Christians, Muslims and even Hindus, especially as the younger generation slacken their ‘pure veg’ yokes). However, you’ll be hard pressed to find a meat kebab before 7pm; as is Mumbai’s bewildering wont, kebabs are only served as darkness descends (and often accompanied with the twin indulgence of alcohol).

The apotheosis of meat kebab feasting, and a haven for the visiting non-veggie should a diet of dhal and rice be leaving you weak, is the legendary Bademiya. A popular weekend destination for rich Mumbaikans from the northern suburbs, this kebab-wallah stall, tucked behind the imposing Taj Mahal hotel in Colaba, serves up delicious flame-grilled chicken and mutton steaks, wrapped in piping hot roti, or, at the adjacent window, paneer dishes (a type of soft Indian cheese, often wrongly dubbed ‘cottage cheese’). Bademiya is thronged from 12am onwards with customers leaning rakishly on their car bonnets in the style of a 1950s American drive-thru; Brylcreem levels are almost in keeping too (Indian men devote lavish amounts of time to personal hair grooming). Bademiya, Tulloch Road, Mumbai.

All pockets, creeds and culinary predilections are catered for in Mumbai, and, cruelly conscious that we only had time to a sample fraction, it was time to go for the jugular by lunching on ‘thali’, named for the satellite-dish sized plate on which the meal is served and typical across India. All Indian states have a twist on this classic meal – a waistband-busting combination of mounds of vegetable curry, glistening puris, heaps of virgin rice, dhals, curds (the Indian replacement for yoghurt), spicy tamarind broths and tooth-cloying condensed milk sweets. Soundtracked by the romantic vibrato of Bengali pop, we bloated our cheeks with the robust Calcutta version at Howrah, a restaurant decorated in a deckchair riot of green and cream stripes in the Crawford Market district of Mumbai, and a second home for Bengali-born Mumbaikans. Waiters dressed in green kurtas and flowing white dhotis wove around Howrah’s tables as we ate, topping up divine bamboo-shoot curries and mango chutneys faster than a ravenous hippy could devour them.

If Indian cooking is an art, Parsi diners are Mumbai’s Warhol phase. All pastel-green formica, murky fish tanks and art deco tiling, Jimmy Boy is perhaps the most characterful Parsi diner in Mumbai, serving up Parsi classics such as chicken dhansak (in a thick, spicy lentil sauce with ‘brown’ caramelised rice) and the somewhat surreal ‘per eedu’, which translates literally as ‘eggs on’; the eggs in this case being frilly and freshly fried. Judging it a happy opportunity to consume an entire years’ worth of cholesterol in one sitting, we tried fried okra (lady finger) and potato crisps per eedu. You can also plump for fine mince per eedhu or – sadly, I’m not kidding – omelette per eedhu.

We couldn’t reasonably conclude our tour without sniffing out fashionable fine dining with impeccable Indian credentials and Khyber in downtown Mumbai, with its porn-movie opulent Arabian Nights interior and black-tied waiters, was perfect. Khyber – which is widely regarded as the best restaurant in Mumbai – has a Punjabi menu, with an emphasis on north India’s famous tandoori cooking and a generous helping of Mughlai influences (uncompromisingly rich butter, almond, saffron and cream-based sauces). Admittedly, even an old boot tastes divine cooked in a tandoor – a lava-hot, wood-burning clay pot oven, usually presided over by a man with asbestos hands and the appearance of having recently emerged from a Victorian engine house. But Khyber’s classic tandoori chicken – marinated in spice paste and curd, the marinade having dripped onto the tandoori wood to impart a divine, smoky flavour – was almost sexual in its succulence. Khyber’s melting cumin potatoes and prawn kebabs thickly jacketed in fresh coriander paste are justifiably famous too.

Sadly, our time in Mumbai was swift drawing to a close. We watched our final day wane in a true Mumbaikan tradition: on Chowpatty Beach, a crescent of greying sand to the west of Mumbai that, as one of the precious open spaces in this populous city, is a top weekend hangout, popular for families and courting couples long before Mumbai’s western nightlife scene began to take off. Chowpatty fast food still means the banging, hissing hotplates of the pav bhaji wallahs – who serve up a delicious stew of coriander and cumin-spiced vegetables accompanied by a hot buttered bun. As the light dipped, we joined a phalanx of contented Mumbaikans gazing wistfully out over a sea like liquid midnight as they scooped up their pav bhaji in warm bread or chewed contentedly on another local delicacy – smoky barbequed sweetcorn rubbed with sweet lime and garam masala. It’s swiftly apparent, especially to an Anglo Saxon schooled to treat food primarily as a source of fuel that food in Mumbai is about much more than the act of eating. Indians use their hand when eating, in order to experience joys of food’s texture at their fingertips, one of the many Indian culinary concepts lost to the uninitiated Westerner. For Mumbaikans, eating is as much about spirituality and sustenance, and much of their riotous, infectious energy is invested into its preparation. And, as an old Indian proverb notes: ‘all that is given is not lost’.

Say what?
The occasionally inscrutable Indian menu.

‘100% artificial… contains no fruit’ – proud boast on an Indian coke bottle
Chicken katan blueinside chest…. Chicken kiev, Bombay menu style
‘Fried jews with nipple cheese’… the mind boggles
Thumbs up and Gold Spot…. Neon-hued fizzy pops… possibly contain more sugar than sugar itself. Adverts imprecate you to ‘enjoy goldspotting’.
Paan… digestive made of betelnut and spices. Mild amphetamine-like qualities, causes attractive red gum straining.

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