Panshikar Aahar

Girgaum is the old Marathi heart of the island city, a grid of chawls, wadis and temple lanes that has survived the mills, the reclamations and the towers now rising around it.

• Panshikar Aahar sits in that streetscape near Thakurdwar: a compact, brightly lit eatery with a handful of tables and a busy takeaway counter, where customers read the board, order by name and either grab a seat or carry parcels home.
• It has been a fixture in the neighbourhood for generations, and for many Girgaum families a stop here is less a meal than a small ritual attached to festivals, visits and homecomings.
• What the shop is known for is a short, confident Konkani-Maharashtrian repertoire.
• Piyush, the thick saffron-tinted drink of strained curd whisked with buttermilk, sugar, cardamom and nutmeg, is the signature, poured cold into steel tumblers.
• Beside it sit basundi, milk reduced slowly until it thickens and sweetens, and amrakhand, shrikhand folded through with mango pulp in the summer months.
• On the savoury side there is thalipeeth, the hand-pressed multigrain Maharashtrian flatbread served with a pat of white butter, along with sabudana khichdi, batata vada and other everyday snacks that Mumbai's Marathi kitchens have always made.
• The kitchen is vegetarian, and during Ganeshotsav it turns out ukadiche modak, the steamed rice-flour dumplings filled with coconut and jaggery that households across the city order by the dozen.
• Come mid-morning or mid-afternoon if you want a short queue; evenings and festival weeks, especially Ganesh Chaturthi and the Diwali faral season, can mean a long and cheerful wait spilling onto the footpath.
• Prices are modest and portions are deliberately small, so the pleasure lies in ordering two or three things and moving on.
• Pair the stop with a slow walk through Khotachiwadi's surviving Portuguese-influenced wooden houses, the temple lanes around Thakurdwar, or the seafront at Girgaum Chowpatty about ten minutes away.
• Vegetarian eating is easy in this pocket, though Mumbai at large serves a great deal of seafood and non-vegetarian food, so it is always worth checking the board before you order.
• Vinay Health Home on Thakurdwar Road near Charni Road, a long-running Maharashtrian eatery, is the standby for misal pav, sabudana vada and kothimbir vadi; confirm it is pure-veg when you arrive.
• The small Maharashtrian snack counters along Thakurdwar and the Girgaum lanes do misal, poha and batata vada, and the evening stalls at Girgaum Chowpatty do bhelpuri, pani puri, pav bhaji and kulfi, but stalls vary, so pick one that clearly states pure-veg and ask before ordering.
• For mithai and farsan to carry away, the shops around Kalbadevi and Bhuleshwar to the north are a short ride, and Jain travellers should ask about onion and garlic specifically.