At the far end of a glistening beach, the sunlight bounces off a large bamboo scaffolding teeming with tiny fish. The air is pungent from the drying trawl and there's salt in the wind — this is the Bombay/Mumbai you rarely see in the movies. But it is as much a part of the metropolis' landscape as a hurried montage of scurrying trains and breakwaters splashing against the tetrapods on Marine Drive is. The story is similar to the city's cuisine, which has been symbolically represented by the Bombay sandwich, vada pav and pav bhaji for far too long. The secret bottle masala and crisp bombil fry are, in fact, just as Bambaiyya when it comes to food.

Sanjeev Kapoor