Mumbai Streets are home to
soothsayers, barbers, cobblers, ear cleaners and other such rural migrants. Strange
things land up on Mumbai Street - one of them being the fast serving
"Street Vendors". There are a large variety of snacks available on the streets, which are very tempting.
Huge crowds surround these stalls in the evenings. You will find
regular people to some of the top personalities
of Mumbai eating here.
Bhelpuri
This delicious dish is an unbeatable concoction
of crunchy yellow sev (gram-flour semolina), puffed rice, onions and potatoes, garnished
with sweet sour and spicy chutneys, coriander and lime. Ideally, it has to be scooped
rapidly into your mouth with the help of a crispy edible puri. Similarly there is
Sev Puri which has six puris, topped with bhel.
Pani Puri
is something like a hollow cracked open and
filled with spicy water before serving. All these spicy dishes belong to a genre of north
Indian snacks called chaat
Pav Bhaji
Pav Bhaji is basically a vegetable stew, accompanied
by warm, lightly sautéed in butter bread or "pao". The dish does good business at
curbside stalls where the
stew is freshly prepared on a huge iron girdle called tawa. It is very easy to make pao bhaji. what you need is finely chop slices of
potato, carrot, peas,
onions , tomatoes and cauliflower. Smother them in butter and within a minute you can mash
them into a runny stew, add Pav Bhaaji Masala that is spicy and delicious.
Vada Pao
The staple diet of Mumbai's floating migrant
population. - cheap and filling. Vada is a spicy, deep fried potato dumpling. It is
sandwiched in a thick, soft mound of bread called "pao". These
vada paos are served with red or green chutney There are small stalls of Vada Pao on every corner of Mumbai streets. Even though they are not hygienic they are eaten with great
delight.
Trivia :
Mumbai’s favorite
snack was born 35 years ago, when Ashok Vaidya, a snack seller outside
Dadar station, decided to experiment. The combination of batata vada and
split pav continues to be the city’s sledgehammer answer to the
burger.
A staunch Sena loyalist, Vaidya used to sell batata poha and batata vada
when one day he offered vada with pav on a customer’s request. Soon,
he discovered that there were more takers for the new delicacy. After
Vaidya, his son Narendra took over the stall outside Dadar.
Kulfi
Kulfi is
Indian ice-cream made from rich condensed milk and flavorings.
Again, there are a large number if varieties, but the basic is "malai" or cream kulfi with a
dash of cardamom and nutmeg. Pista Kulfi has pistachio chips and a slight green
color. Other flavors include chikoo,
sitaphal and mango.
Narial Pani
Another alternative is Narial Pani or coconut water
easily available at sidewalk stalls. This is a good thirst quencher, safe and quite delicious. After you're done ask the vendor to scrape out the tender kernel inside -sometimes a large coconut is a meal in itself.
