What is Pao Bhaji?

Finger-lickin’ good stuff, sold off the streets of Mumbai and Pune. It’s nourishing, too! Pao means bun in Marathi, the local language, and Bhaji is a generic term for a vegetable dish. Urban legend has it that the dish was dreamed up by a vendor decades ago to cater to the workers of Mumbai’s textile mills.

Assorted vegetables added to a mashed potato, onion and tomato base, form the thick gravy, cooked on an enormous griddle. The 12-spice mix added to it imparts a unique flavor that sends one’s taste buds into a tizzy. The pao is sliced in half, pan-fried with a dollop of butter and served with bhaji.