Parsi Dairy Farm Mithai Counter

Princess Street — officially Shamaldas Gandhi Marg — is the old commercial artery that runs inland from Marine Lines towards the wholesale lanes of Kalbadevi, and somewhere along it, behind a plain frontage that does nothing to advertise itself, sits Parsi Dairy Farm.

• It has been selling milk, mithai and kulfi from this stretch since 1916, which makes it one of the oldest continuously trading food counters in South Mumbai.
• There is no dining room and no ceremony here: a long marble-topped counter, glass cases of sweets sold by weight, staff in white moving briskly, and a queue that thickens without warning around festival weeks.
• What is on the counter is dairy-led and entirely vegetarian.
• Mava — thickened milk solids — is the backbone: peda and barfi in several styles, rich kaju and badam preparations, and the cardamom-and-saffron shrikhand that many Mumbai households still buy here by the kilo rather than setting at home.
• Sutarfeni spun into fine sugary threads, badam pak, and kulfi dense enough to need a knife round out the list, alongside plain provisions — paneer, fresh cream, white butter and ghee — that the shop has always sold to neighbourhood cooks.
• A sugar-free range sits beside the regular trays, which is unusual for a mithai counter of this vintage.
• The milk is said to come from the family's own farm north of the city, near the Maharashtra–Gujarat border; treat that as the shop's own long-repeated story rather than something you can confirm at the counter.
• Visiting is a transaction rather than an outing.
• Point, ask for a hundred grams, then eat standing on the pavement or carry a box away; nobody lingers.
• Mava sweets are best eaten within a day or two, so buy small unless you are heading straight home, and ask for a packed box if you are travelling onward.
• Hours are shop hours rather than restaurant hours — broadly mid-morning to early evening — and they shift around festivals and public holidays, so check before making a special journey across the city.
• Diwali and the Parsi new year bring the longest waits of the year.
• For a proper vegetarian meal afterwards, this corner of the city is well supplied, but Mumbai is also a major seafood city, so read the board before you sit down.
• The lanes around Marine Lines, Charni Road and Kalbadevi hold a number of Gujarati and Jain thali halls and old-style Udupi cafes serving idli, dosa and filter coffee; most display a clear pure-vegetarian sign, and the safe habit is to confirm at the counter before ordering rather than assume.
• Girgaum Chowpatty, a short ride west, is the evening option — bhelpuri, pani puri, kulfi and roasted corn along the sand — where the chaat stalls are overwhelmingly vegetarian but still worth a quick question to the vendor.
• If you would rather stay with sweets, Kalbadevi's older farsan and mithai counters are within walking distance, again with the same confirm-first rule.