Custom made: Mumbai
They once numbered in the hundreds, but the few Parsi cafes that survive in Mumbai today have lost none of their charm, writes Rosie Birkett
I'm eating the best creme caramel of my life in 26 degrees Celsius heat, with life-sized cutouts of Britain's Duke and Duchess of Cambridge smiling down at me from the dining room's somewhat slanting balcony. A pigeon snoozes on the lone chandelier, dusty beneath peeling turquoise paintwork, and ceiling fans whirr over crowded, chattering tables. I'm sitting in Britannia & Co Restaurant, one of the last remaining Parsi cafes in south Mumbai (or south Bombay, as the locals so protectively still call it), and I'm stuffed full of food.
Opened in the 19th century by Parsi settlers - Zoroastrians from Iran - these cafes, with their magnificently faded, time-capsule dining rooms and speciality dishes, are a gloriously eccentric part of the fabric of Mumbai. They are also democratic and inclusive places, where people of all backgrounds, classes and sexes meet - you might find a Sikh next to a Hindu or Zoroastrian, or a group of young female students dining alone.
They are also a dying breed. In 1950, there were about 550 of them, many having grown from humble tea stalls; now only 15 to 20 are still open.
"It's so sad there are so few left," says British restaurateur Kavi Thakrar, who - along with his cousin Shamil Thakrar and chef Naved Nasir - created London's Dishoom restaurants (see Hot spots, page 52) in the mould of these cafes. The three are acting as my guides on a food tour of Mumbai and between them know this city's cuisine inside out: Nasir because he lived and cooked here for four years, the Thakrars because they've spent chunks of time here visiting grandparents. Shamil was married here in 2006, in a syndicated ceremony he shared with six couples from the city's slums.
"Mumbai is a city of immigrants," says Shamil, through mouthfuls of the deep, almost cheesy creamy caramel and sips of fresh lime soda - a quenching mixture of lime juice, salt, sugar and fizzy water that's a must-order here. "It's a huge mix and the cafes are the greatest example of that."
On a wall, cultural tributes preside over us: a painting of Queen Elizabeth II sits next to a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi, and over both of them looms a gilt-framed picture of Zarathustra, the prophet worshipped by the Parsis. They form an unlikely trio that sums up the essence of these cafes: their legacy from the days of the raj, their tolerance of all religions and their Zoroastrian roots.