Royal Opera House, Girgaum

A short walk back from the seafront at Girgaum, where the tram-era lanes of the old city run into the Art Deco apartment blocks of Marine Drive, a pale Baroque facade rises out of a traffic junction that all of Mumbai still calls, simply, Opera House.

• The Royal Opera House is the last playhouse of its kind left in India: a theatre of curved balconies, gilded plasterwork, chandeliers and a scrolled pediment, marooned for two decades behind locked shutters and then coaxed back into use.
• Even if you never get past the portico, the facade at dusk — lamps on, ornament picked out in shadow — is worth the detour from the promenade.
• The foundation stone was laid in 1909, King George V inaugurated the still-unfinished building during his 1911 visit to Bombay, and the theatre was completed and opened to audiences in 1912, a venture of the touring impresario Maurice Bandmann and a local partner.
• It was built for visiting English companies but quickly became a home for Marathi and Gujarati drama, Hindustani classical concerts and, in time, cinema; the Gondal royal family acquired it in the mid-twentieth century.
• As single-screen halls faded across the city, the building went dark in the early 1990s and decayed badly.
• A long, meticulous conservation project led by the architect Abha Narain Lambah returned it to service in 2016, and the work was honoured with a UNESCO Asia-Pacific heritage conservation award soon after.
• Girgaum is one of the friendlier corners of Mumbai for meat-free eating, because this is old Gujarati and Maharashtrian Bombay and a great deal of the neighbourhood's everyday food is vegetarian by habit.
• That said, Mumbai is also a major seafood city, so never assume: read the board, look for a clear pure-veg declaration and ask at the counter before you order anywhere.
• Within a short walk you will find Maharashtrian snack counters doing misal, batata vada, thalipeeth and sabudana khichdi, Gujarati thali houses and farsan shops around Charni Road, South Indian rooms serving dosa and filter coffee, and old sweet shops selling pedha and chikki.
• Girgaum Chowpatty, about ten minutes away on foot, is a chaat ground of bhelpuri, sev puri, pav bhaji and kulfi — most stalls there are vegetarian, but confirm with the stallholder before ordering, and carry small notes.