Okay let’s take a break from seafood restaurants. The weekend’s second Bombay food report (see here for yesterday’s report on Mangalorean seafood lunch in Fort) is of an entirely vegetarian restaurant, the venerable Swati Snacks. I have eaten at their Tardeo mothership on every single trip I’ve made to Bombay as an adult (since 2005) and there was no way I was not going back with the family. The only shocker is that we made only one visit. The main reasons for this are 1) that on account of my regular visits to the fish market in our neighbourhood we were cooking at home a lot; and 2) since we were eating a fair number of meals out every week as part of the program, we didn’t end up eating out so very much more on our own—and so didn’t end up making repeat visits anywhere as a family. This lunch, at any rate, was very good. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Swati Snacks
Swati Snacks (Bombay, December 2018)
Delhi has probably overtaken Bombay as the premier food city in India* but there are a number of cuisines for which Bombay is rather obviously superior. Malvani, Mangalorean and Parsi are three of these cuisines and Gujarati is another. And if you are in the city the very best place perhaps to eat Gujarati food is the venerable Swati Snacks in Tardeo. A Bombay institution that first opened in 1963, Swati Snacks is the kind of place where you can get a handle on how difficult it is to talk glibly about “traditional” food in the Indian and especially in the Gujarati context. Culture does not stand still and there’s no tastier way to confirm this truism than by taking the measure of the menu at Swati Snacks where thalipith with pitla can be had alongside bajri paneer pizza. A meal at Swati Snacks is a must for every first-time visitor to Bombay. Me, I go on every visit to the city. Continue reading