In the Beginning there was Bombay Duck: A Food History of Mumbai

From the Kolis, who have been fishing in the city’s waters since much before recorded history, and early settlers such as the Pathare Prabhus, to the people who poured into the developing city in the centuries of British rule and those, like the Sindhis, who found a safe haven here during Partition, this is the first truly comprehensive food history of India’s great metropolis.

The city’s nativists like to champion what they consider ‘original cultures’. But originality resides in the Mumbaikar’s inventive impulse, a quality encapsulated in the nativist’s favourite food, the vada pao: Were it not for the Portuguese, who transported the potato or batata to Bombay, and taught the Goans the art of baking bread, or pao, the vada pao may never have been conceived!

Celebrating this rich diversity of cultures and cuisines, this book covers migrants from the Kanara coast, who gave the city the Udipi restaurant; Parsis, who introduced diners to Persian and Gujarati-inflected dishes, and their Irani brethren, who served this food in their iconic cafes; and the myriad Muslim communities that made the old neighbourhood of Bhendi Bazaar a gastronome’s place of pilgrimage.

Bombay Duck is a rigorously researched, delightfully anecdotal history of food in Bombay/Mumbai that is as colourful and cosmopolitan as the city itself.