Here is the post about street food (finally!).
The thing about street food in
Mumbai is that you don't want to eat it on the street, unless of course you fancy getting a burst of diarrhoea. Basically this post will describe some of the awesome dishes that originated as street food but have become a kind of a staple in peoples' homes. So here are the foods that you should try and get your hands on before you leave the "fair" city of Bombay.
1)
Pav bhaji -
Pav means bread and Bhaji literally means vegetables.
This is a spicy (not always hot, just flavorful) dish made with mashed potatoes, onions, garlic, tomatoes and whatever other vegetable you fancy putting in. It is eaten with bread (
pav) that has been toasted (or shallow fried) with butter. The bread used for this dish is a bun like bread (see photo). Lots of people put a liberal sprinkling of cheese on top of the bhaji and sometimes serve it with a dollop of butter. Right before you eat it you can sprinkle some finely chopped raw onions and cilantro onto the bhaji and maybe squeeze some lemon, it's
upto you.
2)
Bhel Puri/Sev Puri/Pani Puri - Collectively known as
chaat, these dishes are very popular throughout India, especially northern and Western India.
The word
puri means fried round pieces of dough that may or may not puff up into little balls.
Puris can be crunchy or soft depending on the way the dough is made. In
chaat, the
puris are always crunchy.
a)
Bhel puri - Puffed rice (not flavored) mixed with broken up
puris and lightly roasted with some salt and turmeric.
The dry components are then mixed with 2 or 3 different types of chutneys and some boiled potatoes, some onions and cilantro. And finally topped off with some
sev;
Sev are thin crunchy vermicelli like noodles made from chickpea four and an intrinsic part of any
chaat. The resulting dish is crunchy, sweet, sour and spicy. The chutneys determine the last three flavors and they can be adjusted to taste.
b)
Sev Puri -
Puris in the shape of small round discs (one mouthful sized) are topped with boiled potato, onions, and a variety of other tasty lentils or vegetables, then topped with 2 or 3 chutneys (and sometimes yogurt) and finally with
sev and some cilantro. Similar flavor profile as
bhel puri, but more crunchy.
c)
Pani puri -
Pani literally means water (so a very important word to know for your visit, but I will cover that in a different
post). However, in this context it means a very tangy and spicy flavored liquid. The
puris in this dish are round and puffy, with room to fill them. They are filled with a potato mixture, some mung beans, some chick peas, a sweet chutney (dates and tamarind) and finally the spicy "
pani". The
pani is put into the
puri right before you pop the whole thing into your mouth. Usually no
sev is added to this dish.
3)
Vada pav - This is a truly
Bombaiyya (from Bombay) dish. There are people selling this dish almost everywhere there is large
collection of people, outside railway stations, outside schools, on the beaches. The "
Vada*" in this case is a "
batata vada" or "potato
vada". It is a round fried dumpling, coated in chickpea flour and filled with a potato garlic mixture and deep fried. This is then put into a bun, like the one used for
pav bhaji along with some dry spicy
chilli (red chili peppers) and garlic mixture. Sometimes people will put a wet chutney (green chili and cilantro or date and tamarind) instead of the dry chutney powder. Here you have an easy on-the-go food that you only need one hand to eat and it is bursting with flavor!
*
Vada - this is a generic word that means fried snacks, e.g. it could also mean fried lentil dough without any coating.
Warnings - Like I said right in the beginning it is safest to eat these "street" foods at home and like anything else just make sure you think about what you are eating and where.
Basically don't eat any cold foods (even bread, if it is a roadside stall), or anything that potentially has "raw" water in it (chutneys are a good example of something usually made with raw water outside of the home). Basically if the water used was not boiled (or came out of a bottle) it is very very unsafe. In India you never drink water straight out of the tap, never ever.
When out and about only drink bottled water, and always check the seal on the bottled water (even at a restaurant!). If you visit someone make sure that the water is not just filtered but also boiled (doesn't matter how rude it sounds), the alternative is to ask for a bottled soft drink like coke or
pepsi.
Along the same lines, salads and fruits that cannot be peeled are a big no no, especially at restaurants and outside of someones home.
That's it for now, looking forward to eating all or some of these (and more) with you all very soon!!
