Mumbai reflects its cultural life through its diverse population and is home to various communities from across India. One more thing through which its culture is reflected is its food. There is a big vegetarian population residing here, and no doubt that you will get a huge variety of dishes in veg restaurants in Mumbai.
Here we have listed 9 vegetarian dishes from Mumbai that you can try by visiting the restaurants, or you can order them online as well.
1. Misal Pav
Misal is a famous breakfast dish for the city’s core Maharashtrian society. You will generally find it in office canteens as well, rather than people’s homes. It includes a curry prepared with moth beans. A crispy gram flour fried snack, i.e., farsan, is mixed into the curry with chopped red onions and lime juice. Thereby making it a dish that offers extraordinary texture and contrasts. It is necessary for an authentic misal to be spicy, whereas the base must be crunchy. Visibly, it seems like an artwork with many colors – usually red, orange, brown, and green. The first mention of the dish was in the early 20th century. This dish is best served with pav, which is soft local bread.
2. Pitla
This conventional Maharashtrian curry is prepared with a paste of gram flour, turmeric powder, red chili powder, and water, which is then made with a mix of curry leaves, spices, onions, garlic paste, and green chilis until it gets the needed texture.
Regular spices involve cumin seeds, mustard seeds, and asafetida, which are put in oil before they are mixed with the remaining ingredients, and then stir-fried all at once. Pitla can alternatively be garnished with finely cut vegetables like fenugreek leaves, spinach, pigweed, or tomatoes. This dish is so famous that you can find it in many veg restaurants in Mumbai.
3. Usal
Usal is a regular Indian dish arising from Maharashtra. The dish can be made with germinated or sprouted beans, lentils, or dried beans, like the key ingredient, but in Maharashtra, it is generally made with germinated moth or matki beans. A mix of sesame seeds, coriander seeds, cloves, coconut, cardamom, cinnamon, peppercorns, and bay leaves is cooked until aromatic, and the mix is then added to cooked onions, tomatoes, garlic, chili and turmeric powder.
The germinated beans are then mixed in the pot, and the mixture is cooked in coconut milk or water until supple but not squishy. If needed, potatoes can be mixed into the dish for additional texture and flavor. Once completed, the usal is garnished with coriander leaves, and the dish is generally served hot. Apart from making this dish at home, you can enjoy it in various veg restaurants in Mumbai.
4. Batata Vada
It is a famous vegetarian street food that originated in Maharashtra. It is a potato fritter prepared with a mix of mashed potatoes and flavored spices that is made into a ball, covered in a chickpea batter known as besan, and then deep-fried.
This dish is usually served with a chutney, including grated coconut, garlic, and tamarind. Batata vada is also an essential part of a popular sandwich known as vada pav, including batata vada and chutney, served on soft buns known as pav. This famous street food is also available in various popular veg restaurants in Mumbai.
5. Bombay Sandwich
Bombay sandwich is a conventional Indian sandwich arising from Mumbai, thus, the name. In order to make it, green chutney is spread on a piece of white sandwich bread without an outer layer, whereas butter is spread on another slice. What goes in between the 2 slices is a jumbling of vegetables and spices like sliced and boiled potatoes, spices, green bell peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, onion slices, and beetroot slices.
The green chutney is generally prepared by mixing coriander, mint, chili peppers, and different masala spices. There are different Bombay sandwiches available, and they can be cooked with 3 layers, but each layer must include a considerable sum of masala spices. This dish is easily available in a number of veg restaurants in Mumbai.
6. Aluchya Wadya
It is a tasty vegetarian dish from Malvani and Maharashtrian cooking. Basic constituents are the same all through the entire region—colocasia leaves packed with a mixture of rice flour, gram flour, tamarind, jaggery, and different spices, although patrode variations alter in shape and the cooking method. Now, you can enjoy this spicy and tasty dish in many veg restaurants in Mumbai as well.
7. Bhelpuri
Bhelpuri is a kind of chaat – a delicious snack that is normally served in cafés and street buggies all through India. There is enough debate regarding what should go in a bhelpuri, but the most normally employed ingredients involve ground nuts, puffed rice, potatoes, onions, fried noodles, and chilis.
Date chutneys or tamarind are generally used to offer the dish a spicy flavor. The dish is very popular in Mumbai, where it is usually enjoyed as a snack for beach or comfort food. This dish can also be enjoyed in several popular veg restaurants in Mumbai. Even though there is no clear proof of the time of bhelpuri’s inception, it is thought that the snack was discovered by an unidentified Gujarati migrant.
8. Pav Bhaji
Pav bhaji is a well-known street food from Maharashtra that includes a vegetable curry generally served with a soft bread roll called pav. The dish originated in the 1850s as a midnight food by street vendors who made it with all the residual vegetables from the day, which were then infused and mixed with ghee butter and spices.
Usually, it was an abrupt and easy food for textile mill workers of Mumbai, but today it is a preferred street snack that is also served in some veg restaurants in Mumbai. There are many options of the essential pav bhaji, with extra cheese, mushrooms, paneer, plantains, and even dried fruits tossed in the flavorsome curry mix.
9. Vada Pav
Vada pav is one of Mumbai’s preferred sandwiches, its name suggesting the key components: vada, or spicy crushed potatoes that are deep-fried in chickpea batter, and white bread rolls, or pav. This effective street food is stated to have been introduced by a street vendor called Ashok Vaidya, who used to work near the Dadar train station in the 1960s and 1970s.
He considered a way to satisfy the hungry workers and found that the perfect dish must be portable, affordable, and simple to make. Ashok prepared vada pav, and its popularity increased, specifically after the Shiv Sena, a nationalist Marathi-Hindu political party, began to endorse the sandwich as a perfect working-class snack.
Conclusion
So, without any confusion, you can select what you actually want and make your taste bud enjoy some of the best dishes served by restaurants in Mumbai. Also, you can taste these dishes by ordering online. Swiggy is an online platform that lets you order all the vegetarian dishes from veg restaurants in Mumbai from the comfort of your home! So, why wait? Order some delicious food now!