Where the Chefs Eat: Camellia Panjabi’s favourite restaurants in Mumbai

With Bombay Brasserie a roaring success, the late ’80s saw Panjabi turn her attention to Thailand. “I became enamoured with Thai cuisine, having tried it for the first time at Bangkok Airport. I realised that setting up a Thai restaurant in India would be impossible, as fresh herbs and spices such as Thai ginger and basil were not readily available at the time. So, I worked with the Taj horticultural team to set up a small garden farm to grow these ourselves in Bombay. In 1993, we opened India’s first Thai restaurant called the Thai Pavilion at the Taj President hotel in Mumbai. It continues to be the best Thai restaurant in India.”

As if that weren’t enough, she eventually decided to go it alone (her career for the Taj Group was so successful that, when she left, their share price fell seven per cent) and she moved to London to join forces with her sister, Namita Panjabi and brother-in-law, Ranjit Mathrani. Together, they launched Masala Zone in Soho in 2001, bringing a selection of India’s most popular street food to London; (there are now four locations across the capital). “This triggered a whole genre of street food restaurants across many cuisines and the rise of food courts and street food truck communities across Europe,” she tells me. She and her team then established the Michelin-starred Amaya on the edge of Knightsbridge, which opened in 2005, having also bought Veeraswarmy, the oldest Indian restaurant in London.

As if not busy enough, Panjabi wrote the world’s bestselling curry book, 50 Great Curries of India, and the Queen awarded her an MBE for services to the restaurant industry. And now, in her 84th year, published another book, Vegetables the Indian Way. “With long stays in India, I’ve spent considerable time trying to invite the most interesting interpretations of Indian vegetarian food,” she muses. “This was a part of my culinary journey that somehow evaded me for many decades,” she tells me, “but which finally all culminated in my new book.”

There is absolutely no sense from Panjabi that she is slowing down: “The book had to be shortened as it was too long, but it could have been twice as big,” she informs me. Travelling as she does between London and Mumbai (which she still refers to as Bombay: “I call it Bombay because that is where I grew up”), her enthusiasm for restaurants in any guise is electrifying. I could have spent hours chatting to Panjabi. With that dizzying mix of wisdom and wonderful stories, an unstoppable lust for new adventures and foodie anecdotes that left my head spinning, she was an utter joy to spend an afternoon with. And knowing Mumbai as she does, there seemed no one better to guide us to the top spots in ‘The City of Dreams’, so, henceforth, Camellia Panjabi’s favourite Mumbai eateries.

The Table

“The restaurant in Bombay that has the best Western cuisine, by far, is The Table. Established approximately 15 years ago by Gauri Devidayal, it is situated directly behind the Taj Mahal Hotel. Gauri is a gutsy lady, and her husband, Jay, was a breath of fresh air for the city’s sophisticated diners. It brought to Bombay, for the first time, an array of tasty salads, such as the Sobo (South Bombay) salad, which is a ginger sesame chicken salad. They also do a wonderful duck salad, which I always order whenever I go. The warm cornbread with chilli butter, the chicken wings, and their crab dishes are all must-haves, too. Their seafood dishes are made using the freshest catch from Bombay’s coast, and they do a special that is baby pomfret with lemon pepper, which I highly recommend, alongside the grilled prawns. They also have delicious cocktails, a sensible wine list and such a large menu to choose from that you can’t but come away happy.”