Alright we’re back in Bombay. When last seen, I was at Pradeep Gomantak in Fort eating a Goan seafood thali. This week’s report also involves a seafood thali but this report comes to you from Prabhadevi, from a less-storied restaurant than Pradeep. Indeed, until we ate there, neither I nor my dining companion—a long-time resident of the city—had ever heard of it. We had set out to eat Malvani dinner at Chaitanya but had arrived to find a projected wait of 90 minutes or longer. Chaitanya’s food is outstanding but we weren’t about to stand around for 90 minutes. So we checked Google Maps to see what else was around and found another Malvani restaurant, Sarangaa just a few minutes walk away. There was no wait at Sarangaa and so we quickly got down to business.

Sarangaa is a small restaurant. At first we thought it was smaller than it is as we were seated in the tiny dining room past the front door. But then we realized there’s another floor and asked to go up there. It’s not large per se up there but feels less crammed and if you go to eat at Sarangaa I would suggest trying upstairs first.

Much of their menu will be familiar to people who eat Malvani food out a lot in the city. But in addition to Malvani and other coastal seafood dishes they do also have other things on offer: some Agri dishes and also things like Saoji mutton from Nagpur. We got a mix of things to share between the two of us. I believe strongly in trying bombil fry at every seafood restaurant I eat at in Bombay and we got that to start. It was rather good. We then split a prawns thali. This included not only prawn rava fry and a tasty prawn masala but also zavla—a pungent dry preparation of dried shrimp—and a tisrya/clams masala. Both of these were very good. There was also a fish curry on the thali but we didn’t pay as much attention to that.

Alongside the thali we got an order of the Saoji mutton. We had expressly asked for this famously hot mutton dish to be made hot but in the process we may have confused the manager, who was taking our order. For the dish that turned up seemed to perhaps have had the heat dialed down! Still, it was very tasty and the mutton  was very nicely cooked.

Oh yes, we also had a couple of drinks: a kokum soda for my companion and a solkadi for me (I will also always order solkadi at every coastal restaurant I eat at in Bombay).

For a look at the restaurant and everything we ate, launch the slideshow below. Scroll down to see how much it all cost and to see what’s coming next.

All of this came to Rs. 1607 before tip, or less than $10/head. Pretty good value for the quality and quantity. I certainly wouldn’t choose them over Chaitanya but I would happily eat there again. And while for all I know Sarangaa is in fact very well-known to aficionados of Malvani food in Bombay, it seems to me also a sign of just how well that cuisine is represented in the city that we walked in off the street to a not-very busy restaurant specializing in it and had a fine meal.

As it happens, I did get to Chaitanya later in my stay in the city but I’ll wait a while to post that report. Next week’s belated Indian report will be from Delhi and from December 2025. Before that I’ll have another Twin Cities report on Wednesday, another Japan report on Friday and another report from Los Angeles on Sunday.