- I'm gonna take a piece of chapati
and scoop up for my first bite.
Wow, that is amazing.
(rhythmic drum music)
Good morning everyone, it's Mark Wiens
with migrationology.com in Mumbai, India.
It is almost 9 a.m., this is our first day in Mumbai,
and I have a list of a bunch of things,
a bunch of places to eat and some attractions,
some sightseeing to do, but really,
I find it really kind of hard
to make a set itinerary when
you don't really know how to navigate around.
So we are just off to just walk around
for a little while and see what happens today.
(mellow Indian music)
Our hotel is in the Colaba area,
but we're taking a little walk down the road,
or past a couple roundabouts
to an area called Fort.
One of the things I love about India
and that I remember from my previous trips to India
is that even in the huge cities,
the congested huge cities,
you can still always hear the birds chirping in the trees.
That's pretty awesome.
(dog barking)
(street noises)
And all of a sudden, it looks like it's going to downpour.
Even the birds are flying away.
Oh, okay, it's starting to rain
right now as I'm talking.
We didn't get that far,
we didn't get anything accomplished,
but it has started raining.
So far, walking around this area is really nice.
What I really like are all of the trees,
so many trees, and then just like
kind of decaying old buildings,
but it's beautiful to walk around this area.
Luckily, the rain didn't last very long,
and so we are walking now over to
one of the main train stations,
which is known in brief as CST.
(horns honking)
The real name is Chhatrapati Sivaji Terminus,
which I am reading from up here,
but the old name is VT, which is Victoria Terminal,
and there are just masses of people.
It is like a humidity steam bath
in Mumbai right now after that rain.
(mellow Indian music)
(speaking in Hindi)
Okay, thank you very much.
One of the absolute best joys
of being in India is drinking chai,
and you, just walking down the streets,
there are tea stalls everywhere you look.
They brew it fresh, and they add milk in it,
and then they squeeze out the tea leaves,
and then they serve it to you just in small cups,
and it's always piping hot,
actually like burning hot,
my fingers are on fire right now.
Oh, oh I have missed you,
oh that's wonderful.
It's strong tea, you can taste
just a hint of spice in there,
and maybe a little bit of cardamom in there,
and then it's creamy, just fantastic.
There's just nothing greater than
standing along the side of the street
drinking a cup of chai.
Yeah.
(horns honking)
Drinking cups of hot tea on the side of the road
is just one of the great joys of being in India.
It's so good, it's such a simple, fantastic thing.
We are now walking to try and find
a very legendary restaurant in Mumbai.
- [Ing] I think it's right there.
How are you?
- I am fine.
Where from?
- [Ing] From Thailand.
- This is my friend, my friend.
- [Mark] Okay, good, good.
- Why you came here?
- [Mark] Just traveling, and eating.
Came to eat.
- Indian food, okay.
- [Mark] Is it open yet?
- Yeah, it's not open.
- [Mark] Nice to meet you.
When I asked for restaurant recommendations in Mumbai,
Brittania and Company,
this was one of the top recommendations,
so I am here.
This restaurant is famous for serving Parsi food,
which is a combination of Iranian Persian food
and Indian food, and so this is a type of cuisine
that you have to eat when you are in Mumbai.
Also, we got here kind of right as they opened,
so we beat the lunch rush,
but I'm sure in maybe an hour from how,
when the offices are let out,
this place is going to be packed.
And our first dish has just arrived.
I've also got a fresh chapati,
oh, you can feel how fresh and kind of,
it's kind of dense but fluffy at the same time,
and scoop up for my first bite.
Wow, that is amazing.
That mutton is kind of like stringy,
and then the flavor that's wrapped up in it,
but the blend of spices in there,
I'm not even totally sure what is all in there,
but wow, it's flavorful,
and it's really not, it's kind of watery,
as opposed to buttery or oily, which is really nice,
and then all these little fried crispies on there,
they kind of add an extra texture dimension.
It's not so strong, like an Indian curry,
but it has a little bit of a milder taste to it,
but incredibly good.
I'm going to add some of these onions though,
these onions are very tempting,
oh, and a wedge of lime.
This might give it the added boost of fresh crunch to it,
not that it needs anything extra,
but I'm just kind of an onion kind of guy.
Okay, that's a lot of onions.
Wow.
It's such an amazing blend of spices and meat.
I also don't want to pass up this opportunity
to mention how good the chapati is.
The chapati is kind of gooey, but then,
it's light and it actually is really,
it's an amazing chapati.
Thank you very much.
- [Waiter] It's special.
- I didn't even notice this at first
when I sat down at the restaurant,
but something I have to point out to you
is this bouquet of napkins.
What a beautiful stack,
I'm gonna grab one off the top here,
and then also on the napkins.
That is my kind of a phrase.
The other dishes that we ordered have arrived,
and one of the dishes that this restaurant
is very well known for is their berry pulav,
and pulav is, it's similar to biryani,
not quite the same, actually quite different,
but they're famous for serving a berry version,
and I think, I think the berries are like ...
- Bar berries, they are dried,
and this is rice.
- Oh, okay.
Bar berry, okay, they are called bar berries,
and they are, yeah,
they look kind of like very small raisins,
very dried up, or little black currants,
and then also on the top,
there were a bunch of fried shallots,
and then we got the one with chicken,
that's a big nugget of chicken.
Let me just taste, making sure I got
a lot of those berries in there.
Mm-hmm.
It's so fragrant, and those little berries,
they kind of have a sour taste to them.
Mm, it's not really very strong in flavor,
but everything really just harmonizes together.
And then the final dish we got
is something called dhansak,
which is the Parsi version of lentils,
and we got the mutton version,
so there's chunks of mutton in it as well,
and then it's served with his big plate of rice,
which is some kind of spiced or fragrant rice,
as well as a couple of,
i think these are mutton meatballs.
I'll put some of the rice down as the base,
and then go for some of the dhansak,
oh, and those are big chunks of mutton.
I just want to taste that dhansak, actually, first.
Mm, mm.
There's some kind of very unique spice in there,
like maybe fenugreek,
but it has a very unique, distinct spice to it.
- Spices inside is the green chile, red chile also.
- I was thinking there was some kind of spice in it,
but I just asked the waiter, and he told me that
it's both green chile and red chile in there
that gives it the flavor,
and then it's just the lentils,
so it has kind of that lentil,
grainy texture to it, a piece of that mutton, oh yes.
Tender mutton.
That was some really good food,
and one of the things that also
is highly recommended here that I think
just about everybody who eats here orders for dessert
is the caramel custard,
and I don't really have a sweet tooth,
but I have to try it.
Mm.
Wow, it's almost like cream cheesy,
just lightly caramel flavored,
and then sweet, not like silky soft smooth,
but kind of like,
airy smooth.
Yeah, that is very good.
It's kind of like a stiff pudding.
- I know them.
- [Mark] Oh, very nice.
- They have drink in Mumbai, two months ago,
and they invited me to dine with them.
I went and met them at hotel.
- [Mark] Okay.
- Oh, okay.
- Parsi.
The Parsi food is a combination of --
- Did you have the berry pulav?
- Yes, we had the chicken berry, very nice.
- Part Indian and Iran culture.
- Just finished our meal at Brittania and Company,
the food was incredible.
I especially liked the berry pulav,
the rice dish with those berries on top,
and also that sali boti was just unbelievably good.
What really makes this restaurant
like a heritage, and just a beautiful place,
is because of the owners
and the history of the restaurant.
The owner, he is 94 years old
at the time of making this video,
and he is up and around, talking and greeting all of,
everyone eating at the restaurant, telling stories.
He'll definitely tell you some stories,
but he's an extremely nice man,
and he's really an inspiration.
Hello, by Colaba.
Lunch was extremely good, I am stuffed,
so we decided to jump into a taxi
and we're on our way to go visit a museum next.
(mellow Indian music)
We drove all the way to a museum called
Dr. Bhau Daji museum, but unfortunately,
today they are closed, even though
the opening hours said they were open today,
but they said today it's randomly closed,
so instead we're going to drive over
to the Gandhi museum.
Something that will never get old or boring
is looking out the window while driving around in India.
There's just so much action happening everywhere you look.
It just started downpouring again.
It will like downpour for a few minutes,
and then just kind of drizzle for awhile,
and then it will downpour, and then it will stop,
and then it will downpour again.
Lots of people.
This is the biggest laundromat.
As we were driving on our way to the museum,
our taxi driver, who is very kind,
stopped here at Dhobi Ghat,
and Dhobi Ghat is Mumbai's largest
open air laundromat.
We're going to go down the stairs
to the bottom of the laundromat
and just take a quick look.
You've kind of got to walk around the outside,
but I think this is the main entrance.
Hello.
- [Boy] Hello.
(speaking in Hindi)
- It's not too busy right now,
maybe it's the time of the day that we're here,
right in the middle of the afternoon,
but this is like an entire,
an entire community, and entire village
that washes clothes, and there are just pools of water.
We can only stay here for a few minutes
because our taxi driver is waiting on the bridge for us,
but it's really interesting to walk around.
This is just an entire, whoa, be careful,
you've got to be careful where you're walking,
or you will end up in the laundromat,
but it's very interesting to see,
and this is Mumbai's largest open air laundromat,
maybe one of the largest open air laundromats
in the entire world.
Hello.
- [Man] Hello.
- How are you?
Be careful.
Because it's the rainy season in Mumbai right now,
and it's been raining off and on all day,
when it stops raining, the air is just so
incredibly humid, it's just saturated with water,
you can probably see my face right now,
I don't know, can you see beads of perspiration,
but just walking around Dhobi Ghat for a few seconds,
and I'm just literally dripping.
My shirt is just, you could probably
wring this out like the laundromat.
(light Indian pop music)
- Gandhi house museum.
- We drove over now to the Mani Bhavan Gandhi Museum,
and it's amazing the contrast in Mumbai
from the main roads that are just out of control,
to the side streets and neighborhoods,
where it's so quiet and just tree lined,
and it's really beautiful on these side streets.
Our taxi driver was really nice,
his name was Pradeep, thank you, Pradeep,
and we are now stopping here at the museum.
This is the house where Gandhi lived
when he would make his visits to Mumbai,
from I think it was from about 1917 to 1934.
There's a library in there, and mostly
the museum just walks you through a lot of
photographs of Gandhi and his impact
on both India and the world,
and just his incredible work and the things that he did.
It's really a quiet peaceful place in there.
You can just kind of stroll around leisurely.
Our next plan of action is to walk over to
Chowpatty Beach, which is, should just be
a few minutes walk away from where we are right now,
and hopefully, yeah, we'll walk close to the beach,
enjoy the views, and hopefully there'll be
some snacks around that area as well, to enjoy.
I'm ready for some snacks.
We made it to Chowpatty, which is one of the
main beaches in Mumbai.
It's a huge expanse of sand,
and there are crows or pigeons flying over.
You get a nice view of the city,
and I think we're just going to walk along
this stretch of beach for a little while.
Okay.
(speaking in Hindi)
Very nice dresses.
- Thanks.
- So many people in Mumbai are so friendly.
(speaking in Hindi)
This is not really a swimming beach, hello.
- Hello, hi.
- [Mark] How are you?
- Fine.
- Nice to meet you.
This isn't really a swimming beach,
although there are some kids swimming,
but it's more of a strolling beach.
It has a huge sandbank, so you can just walk along.
(speaking in Hindi)
Okay, nice to meet you, bye.
Ing and I have had a selfie marathon
here at Chowpatty Beach.
One of my favorite things to eat,
street food snacks, is called pani puri,
which are little puris, which are little
crispy fritters, which are hollow,
and they're filled with a combination of
chickpeas and a, like, spiced fragrant water.
Thank you.
So this is the pani puri,
and the outside is the puri,
and then inside is chickpeas,
and then he fills it with some,
I think there's tamarind water
as well as like some minty water,
well, actually, I'll find out,
but you eat them by the single,
and you've gotta eat them fast
before they go soggy on you.
Mm.
Oh, it's amazing.
It just explodes with juices.
It's salty, it's a little bit spicy,
you can taste like, a little bit
of like a minty freshness,
and then you have like the starchy
chickpeas in there as well,
all wrapped up by like a hollow chip.
Oh, it's good, and once you finish one bite,
you get another one.
Thank you.
Mm.
It's such a genius snack.
I would never think to add liquid to a chip,
but it works so incredibly well.
What I love about it most, I think,
I probably have some driplets of
the pani puri water going down my chin.
It's so flavorful, and it just sort of explodes with,
yeah, it explodes with spice and flavor,
and it's a wonderful snack.
Mm.
It's both a little bit sweet,
but salty and spicy, more so.
It's wonderful, I think I have
a couple left more in my set.
(speaking in Hindi)
And then when you're done eating your pani puri,
you have some water at the bottom
that has fallen out of your puri,
so you can drink it.
It's so refreshing,
it's almost like drinking mint juice,
but with the tamarind sweetness, and nice and salty.
Oh, thank you.
Oh, one more, okay.
Next up, he handed me a dry puri.
Mm, yeah, that's good too.
That tastes like a chip with bean dip in the middle.
That pani puri was superb,
and they have sign that says they use
fresh filtered water, so that's great,
because it's definitely a snack that
you need to be careful eating
because of the water content, but it's so good.
It's such a genius combination,
but now I'm so thirsty right now,
I need a big bottle of water,
so there's a stall right over here
that I'm gonna grab a bottle of water from.
Thank you.
How much is it?
- Twenty, twenty.
- Thank you.
I have been sweating all day long,
and haven't drank that much water,
but after eating a salty snack like pani puri,
I am feeling the thirst.
Ah, cold water, tastes incredible.
As I was drinking that water,
all of a sudden we heard like a roar of people,
just like a whole stampede of people
running this way because it started downpouring
all of a sudden again, so we are standing
underneath an umbrella, underneath a tree,
but it's a fast rain, like it rained really hard
for about one minute, and now it's stopping again.
(speaking in Hindi)
(mellow Indian music)
(speaking in Hindi)
- [Mark] Colaba.
(mellow Indian music)
We took that taxi over to,
or very close to where we started off this morning,
where our hotel is, and we are going to go to
the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya museum,
which is, we have just arrived right here.
It's pretty expensive to visit, at 500 Rupees entrance,
and then they also charge for photography.
Inside, it was pretty interesting.
There are all sorts of different exhibitions
about the history of India.
Definitely my favorite exhibition was the sculpture,
where there are ancient sculptures,
especially rock carvings, and also what I really liked
about this museum is just
the actual museum structure itself.
It kind of has a gothic feel to it,
but then at the same time, the dome really looks like
it has Islamic influence,
and I know the architect who designed this building,
or this structure, also designed the Gateway of India.
For our final attraction stop this afternoon,
we are taking the walk, it's just about
a five minute walk from the museum
to the Gateway of India.
We entered into the main entrance
of the Gateway of India, but they were
pretty strict about no video,
so I was told not to video,
so now we're gonna try to go around
to the outside to get a view of it.
If you walk down the road a little ways,
there's some great views of the Gateway of India,
and then also on this side is the Taj Palace Hotel,
which is also a very famous landmark in Mumbai.
I can smell the aroma of meat as we approach.
(speaking in Hindi)
This restaurant, which happens to be
literally right around the corner from
the hotel where we're staying at,
is called Bademiya, and they are
very, very well known throughout all of Mumbai
for serving kebabs and all sorts of
non-vegetarian food, although they do
have a vegetarian section, separate section,
but most of what they serve is all sorts of grilled meat.
Oh, thank you.
I kind of got a little bit confused,
because I wasn't sure if we were gonna
just stand outside, it's very common
for you to just stand outside and order the rolls,
and just stand on the street and eat,
but then they have this huge dining room,
which is actually quite nice to sit down,
and it kind of feels like you're in a fort,
so the reason that my food is on to go ware
is because I thought we were just going to stand,
but then we decided to sit.
I'm going to go ahead and begin with the mutton seekh kabab,
and these are freshly grilled,
oh, just fingers of meat.
Add some of this chutney, and that looks like,
maybe like a mint chutney, and with some onions,
and I'm just going in straight meat steak.
Oh yeah, kebabs do it for me every time.
The flavor of the smoke that is just
embedded into that minced meat is amazing.
And actually, it does taste,
the meat kind of tastes lean, it doesn't taste too oily,
and you can also taste a lot of onions in there,
and maybe some kind of like parsley,
and that sauce is a little bit spicy as well.
Oh yeah.
I'm a little bit obsessed with kebabs.
They are very well known for their rolls,
and they make the bread fresh,
and so if you had a,
it's like an upside dome with a fire underneath it,
and he spread out the dough and they put it on there,
and it cooks just in a couple seconds,
and I ordered the chicken bhuna roll.
Oh actually, I think I should not actually unravel it,
I think we're supposed to tear it, tear,
so you don't lose any juices on the bottom.
Oh yeah, that's a much better way to eat it.
That bread, that bread is amazing.
It's really very similar to a tortilla,
then that's like shredded chicken,
with kind of a tomato-y, spicy,
kind of yeah, sauce, mm.
Yeah, that is, that is a comfort roll.
What I am gonna attempt to do though
is add some more sauce and some onions,
and scoop that on there, oh yeah.
And since we're sitting here, I could not resist
ordering another piece of chicken,
and it is just, you can just see it
coated in flavor and then grilled to a crisp.
What I like about the chicken is that
you can really taste the grill flavor,
it has an amazing roasted flavor.
The good news is I asked for a refill on the sauce,
so he gave me a whole plate of
both the red sauce and the green sauce with some onions.
This will taste great with the chicken.
Those onions, too, just enhance everything,
and the reason I didn't order more bread,
apart from the roll, is because
Ing and I are actually both
still kind of hungry from lunch,
lunch was a big meal, so yeah,
I'm sticking to mostly protein for this dinner.
All the food I tried was very good.
The chicken leg was maybe a little bit dry,
but I think probably, definitely my favorite thing
was the chicken bhuna roll.
That is insanely good, that's something
you have to eat here, and I am down to
my last bite right now.
It is the wonderful last bite,
where all the oils have all accumulated at the bottom,
and so definitely, the final bite is always the best.
Mm, mm.
That is a must eat in Mumbai.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you.
Okay.
That was a highly satisfying dinner,
and that is gonna be the last thing I do today
before I go straight to bed.
I have to admit, I'm pretty wiped out.
It has been a hot and busy,
and just a fantastic first day in Mumbai,
so I'm gonna end the video right now.
Thank you all very much for watching.
Thank you.
And I just got another napkin,
and please remember to give this video
a thumbs up if you enjoyed it,
and leave a comment below, and oh, another napkin,
and also make sure you subscribe
for lots more food videos,
and I will see you on the next video.
Tomorrow is another beautiful day in Mumbai.
(rhythmic drum music)