The Ultimate Food Guide to Mumbai, From the Chef of Chai Pani and Spicewalla

“I’m soooooo excited,” Meherwan Irani sings while walking through the doors of Mumbai’s Britannia & Co. and pointing us toward a favorite table, which sits just below a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, keeping tabs on the dining room that has served customers for over 100 years.

We’re on our first stop of many with the chef of Chai Pani and Botiwalla by Chai Pani, part of a growing empire of sophisticated yet casual and unabashedly fun Indian street-food restaurants with locations in Atlanta; Asheville, North Carolina; and Charlotte, North Carolina. He’s also the founder of Spicewalla, a chef-driven spice company, headquartered in Asheville. The chef, our guide for a mad-dash tour of Mumbai, is at work on his debut cookbook (No. 1 Best Indian Cookbook in the World, published this week by Ten Speed Press), and he invited us along to jump into his research process, which is characterized by a constant stream of food, very funny inside jokes, and more eating. 

Chai Pani is the winner of one of the James Beard Awards’ highest honors, Outstanding Restaurant, and Irani is an unofficial ambassador for Indian cooking in America, a level of diplomacy that brought him straight to the White House in 2023, when he cooked at a state luncheon in honor of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “Kamala had notes,” he says, laughing, remembering the vice president’s hands-on approach to the menu, which included spinach and potato keema samosas (like Irani’s mother made), khichadi made with millet and mung beans, and a fudgelike mango halvah. It was a news-making meal for the heads of state, and it linked the chef’s Southern American home with Modi’s Gujarati heritage and the traditional Parsi cooking that serves as Irani’s North Star. 

Irani grew up mostly in India, moved to South Carolina, and started his cooking journey after a successful corporate career. The foundation of his culinary background is the Parsi tradition, which he describes as almost universally devoted to home cooking. Parsis are the descendants of Persian Zoroastrians who fled religious persecution after the seventh century from what is now Iran, and they are an extreme minority among India’s 1.5 billion residents. According to the last census, Indian Parsis number only around 55,000, though the culture’s impact on the country’s culinary landscape is profound. Today, Mumbai functions as the beating heart of Parsi heritage in India and a crucial touchstone for Irani, who visited often as a child growing up in Ahmednagar, five hours away.

Mumbai attracts more than 1 million foreign tourists annually. It works as a great initiation for Western travelers visiting India for the first time—it’s a bursting-at-the-seams center of commerce, with both traditional and modern restaurants representing a culinary scene that draws from all of India’s expansive religious communities. The city can be challenging to navigate for even the most seasoned world traveler. Thankfully, Irani is an expert guide.

Irani orders up some of the Britannia & Co. hits, including chicken dhansak, slow-cooked with three types of lentils and sweetened with jaggery, and tangy chicken salli, a curry topped with freshly fried shoestring potatoes, which Irani describes as “particularly dope” on this rainy July afternoon. “Salli is like matzo ball soup for a Jewish family,” he says with a smile. “You can be forgiven for messing up the fish or the biryani, but this one has to be right.” 

A few hours later, we arrive at The Ripon Club, which has served Mumbai’s Parsi community as a members-only social club and restaurant since 1884. Today the light-flooded fourth-floor dining room, with its close proximity to the local courts, is most frequently patronized by the Parsi barrister community. Irani has been invited in by a Mumbai litigator named Jamshed Mistry for a feast of Parsi cooking: mutton pulao; “wedding” achar, a sweet pickle made with carrots, raisins, and dates; and Parsi keema, a sweet-and-sour minced lamb made with sugarcane vinegar (the inspiration for Chai Pani’s now legendary Sloppy Jai, which F&W has called “perhaps the tastiest version of a sloppy Joe you may ever eat.”) 

Irani’s connection to and respect for the Parsi tradition is immediately apparent. A chef in street clothes appears and sits with our group for some Irani chai — a unique style of the ubiquitous drink made with powerful black tea and thicker, sweeter milk. The chefs talk about chef things, and pistachio ice cream sandwiches appear, made with thin wafers from a local dairy, K. Rustom & Co. The Ripon Club’s chef slides Irani the producer’s contact information.

Practically all cookbooks have a dessert section — it’s kind of the law — and with that in mind, our traveling party pays a visit to the legendary Parsi Dairy Farm for some sugar-buzzed research the next morning. “Sweets in Indian culture in general are primarily made with dairy, always special-occasion treats,” says Meherwan of the morsels that are typically presented with festive packaging as gifts to celebrate prosperity, fertility, and the many events that accompany the rhythm of life.   

Parsi Dairy Farm is India’s longest-running continuous dairy, and today it has three locations in the Mumbai metro area that offer exquisite buffalo and cow ghee, freshly pressed paneer, and frozen kulfi (a close cousin to ice cream) that comes in popular flavors like caramelized milk, chocolate, and strawberry. “Ghee is the most pure and sacred food for a Hindu, and it’s the ultimate expression of purity and goodness,” says Irani. At a wedding, during the ceremony of fire, ghee is poured on the flames as an offering to the gods, and the shop’s many styles of the precious clarified butter are presented front and center.  

Irani heads straight to the counter and orders us a collection of his favorites. Boondi pan is a sticky fried snack made with chickpea flour, while gulab jamun is made from milk solids rolled in flour, fried, and then dunked in a light sugar syrup flavored with rose water. It’s the buffalo-milk lassi that thrills Irani the most. “This is the tartness that you just don’t find in America,” he says with a wide smile. We had to try the jalebi — you can’t let fresh jalebi pass you by, Irani explains — the thin bands of fried flour slicked with sugar.

For Irani, the true grail of Indian street food is anything in the puri family. And for anybody who has visited Chai Pani, the sev potato dahi puri (commonly shortened to SPDP) is one of the restaurant’s signature chaats. Toasted, puffed puris are stuffed with potato, then dressed with red onion, cilantro sweet yogurt, and tamarind chutney. 

At odds with its simple and humble eating style, pani puri is a highly technical dish in which thin orbs of fried bread are hollowed out and filled with potatoes, white peas, and mung beans, then dipped into one or more sweet and spicy liquids, creating a crunchy and refreshing combination that is irresistible. Irani takes us to his favorite chaat spot in all of India, the Elco Pani Puri Centre in the Bandra West neighborhood.

The stall has been in operation since 1968, and it’s famous for its ultra-crispy puris. The puris are stuffed with long-stewed potato, mung beans, and pigeon peas and dipped in a duo of ice-cold liquids. The first is a spicy green mint water, tikha pani, made with mint, green chiles, and chaat masala. The second dunk, meetha pani, is a complex tamarind, date, and jaggery liquid. Both crispy and wet, the orbs explode deliciously in your mouth. 

Our final stop on our frantic race through Mumbai takes us through the alleys of the Kalbadevi neighborhood and into the city’s most-famous Gujarati restaurant for an epic vegetarian thali meal. It’s a tasting menu of 30-plus vegetarian dishes. Shree Thaker Bhojanalay was opened in 1945 by Maganbhai Purohit and is currently owned and operated by the chef’s son, Gautam. It’s a famous place — anybody who describes this as a hidden gem hasn’t seen David Chang, Alice Waters, and various members of the international media praise its cooking. It’s also a link to Parsis’ original ancestral home. Following religious persecution in Persia, the Parsis landed in Gujarat sometime around the eighth century and assimilated into Indian culture. Over generations, Parsis moved hundreds of miles south to Mumbai, establishing the community that remains there today. 

Our meal — which lasts about 90 minutes — is a constant flow of small plates filling the larger thalis placed in front of us. Salty farsan and multicolored bhajis (fritters) are followed by spongy dhoklas and rotis, pulao, yogurt kadhi, and a lineup of exquisite sweets that are all centered on the mango, which is in season from March to June here. A glass of buttermilk is always available, and servers will refill anything upon request. It all costs well under $25 per person, and we find ourselves happily stuffed and collectively stunned when the barrage ends. “All Gujaratis take food seriously — it’s probably one of the most sophisticated food cultures of India,” Irani says. Gautam sits with us at the end of the meal and takes our collective glow as the highest compliment. “The traders came to Mumbai from Gujarat and wanted hometown food, and we’ve been doing it ever since,” he says. 

On the ride home, Irani and the group recap the meal excitedly. “This meal, like many thali meals, could have been monochromatic, but it was anything but. The rounds of dals were the real highlight. You just can’t find that many dals in a single place.” This is the essence of eating and drinking around Mumbai, and Irani sits back, satisfied with our excellent introduction to the city’s food culture. “This was unexpected,” he says. Mumbai remains a city of expectations, with surprises around each corner.  

More of Meherwan’s favorite Mumbai restaurants

The Bombay Canteen

A beloved restaurant and cocktail bar from the late, great American chef Floyd Cardoz, the Bombay Canteen ambitiously takes on all of India with dishes spanning north to south like Podi B**f Tartare (served with smoked egg yolk and dosa chips) and grilled octopus with a curry leaf masala.

Golden Dragon

Located at The Taj Mahal Palace, Mumbai, Golden Dragon is one of the oldest operating Chinese restaurants in Mumbai, and it plays the Cantonese and Szechuan hits (dim sum, Peking duck, mala tofu) in an extravagant dining room that has hosted celebrities and heads of state alike.

Ayub’s

Ayub’s is a legendary kebab shop that booms after midnight, offering mutton keema, chicken malai kati rolls, and some great vegetarian options (like paneer tikka), which can be served on a stick or wrapped in freshly made flatbread.

Ekaa

While the tasting menus at Ekaa have attracted much attention, the cocktail list is the serious draw, with drinks crafted from Indian-accented agave spirits, Japanese whiskey, and, of course, gins infused with both classic and experimental botanicals.

Where to Stay in Mumbai

The Taj Mahal Palace Mumbai

Built in 1903, The Taj Mahal Palace, widely known as simply “The Taj,” is the iconic, historic center of Mumbai luxury tourism, situated close to the city’s financial and shopping districts, with several on-site restaurants and a world-class spa. Rooms from $205

Trident, Nariman Point, Mumbai 

Near the tip of Nariman Point, with wide views of the Arabian Sea, this well-situated Trident hotel has a great cocktail bar, daily chai service, and a formidable breakfast buffet, serving both Indian and Western-style dishes. Rooms from $142

The Oberoi, Mumbai

Providing calming opulence with views of the sea, the Oberoi’s 237-room luxury hotel offers a respite from the bustle below. The hotel has culinary workshops for travelers looking to pick up a technique or two. Rooms from $189