Mumbai Street Food Trail
Food trail · Mumbai
Mumbai runs on street food, and this trail hits the essentials — the vada pav and pav bhaji the city made famous, seaside bhel puri at Chowpatty, the kebabs and rolls of the old Mu…
The trail
Mumbai runs on street food, and this trail hits the essentials — the vada pav and pav bhaji the city made famous, seaside bhel puri at Chowpatty, the kebabs and rolls of the old Muslim quarters, and the Irani cafes of Fort. Fast, cheap and endlessly varied, it is best grazed across an evening.
At a glance
5 stops, in eating order.
- 1
South Mumbai
Girgaon ChowpattyBhel puri & sev puri
- 2
Dadar
Ashok Vada PavVada pav
- 3
Colaba
BademiyaSeekh kebab rolls
- 4
Ballard Estate
Britannia & CoBerry pulao
- 5
South Mumbai
Mohammed Ali RoadKebabs, malpua & phirni
What to eat, stop by stop
Every photo below is a real photograph of the dish — this is what your plate should look like.
- 1South Mumbai
Bhel puri & sev puri
Girgaon Chowpatty
Veg Sunset Beach-stall cheapGirgaon Chowpatty at sunset is Mumbai's open-air dining room, and bhel puri is its signature: puffed rice, sev, raw mango, onion and two chutneys tossed to order in a paper cone. Sev puri — flat puris loaded with potato and chutney — is the sit-down cousin. Buy from the busiest stall, eat facing the sea, and let the city do the people-watching for you.
- 2Dadar
Vada pav
Ashok Vada Pav
Veg All day; peak at lunch The cheapest great meal in MumbaiThe vada pav is Mumbai's working lunch — a spiced potato vada fried in gram-flour batter, tucked into a soft pav with dry garlic chutney and a fried green chilli. Ashok Vada Pav, in the lane by Kirti College in Dadar, has been a pilgrimage stop for decades; the crunch of the batter against the pillowy bread is the whole argument.
- 3Colaba
Seekh kebab rolls
Bademiya
Non-veg Late night Street-grill prices, five-star queueBademiya has grilled kebabs in the lane behind the Taj hotel since 1946, and it only really wakes up after dark — smoky seekh kebabs pressed onto skewers, chargrilled, and rolled into rumali roti with onion and chutney. Bollywood, bankers and cab drivers eat side by side off car bonnets. Go late; it gets better as the night goes on.
- 4Ballard Estate
Berry pulao
Britannia & Co
Non-veg Lunch only — the cafe closes by evening A modest splurge, worth every rupeeBritannia & Co., an Irani cafe in Ballard Estate since 1923, serves the dish it made famous: berry pulao, spiced rice with mutton or chicken under a scatter of tart barberries the family originally imported from Iran. The bentwood chairs, portraits and courtly service are half the meal. Lunch only — arrive before the office crowd.
- 5South Mumbai
Kebabs, malpua & phirni
Mohammed Ali Road
Non-veg Evenings; at its magical best during Ramadan Feast food, street pricedMohammed Ali Road is Mumbai's great eating street — a run of grills and sweet shops beneath the flyover where kebabs smoke, malpuas fry in ghee (the classic version here is enriched with egg), and phirni sets in rows of earthen kulhads. During Ramadan the street becomes an all-night festival, but the kitchens are excellent year-round.
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A short history of this food
Mumbai's street food is migration made edible. The vada pav was born in the 1960s-70s outside Dadar's mills and railway stations — a Marathi worker's lunch engineered to be eaten one-handed on the move. Chowpatty's bhel culture grew with the Gujarati and Marwari trading communities; the Irani cafes, opened by Zoroastrian immigrants from Persia in the early 1900s, gave the city berry pulao, bun maska and its unhurried marble-table mornings; and Mohammed Ali Road's grill culture came with Muslim communities from the north. Every plate on this trail is a chapter of who came to Bombay and what they cooked when they arrived.
Eat like a local
- Street stalls here run on speed: know your order by the time you reach the front, pay after you eat.
- The fried green chilli with vada pav is part of the dish — bite it between mouthfuls, don't remove it.
- At Chowpatty, eat standing near the stall; carrying chaat to the water's edge usually ends in a seagull's favour.
- Irani cafes like Britannia keep their own hours and close early — treat 'lunch only' as law, not suggestion.
- During Ramadan, Mohammed Ali Road is busiest after dark; go with patience, an appetite, and small notes.
Making a trip of it?
Mumbai has a full guide — attractions, itineraries and when to go.
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