The Curry Lane

This restaurant screams "Mumbai" all over. The ambience, the food, the staff; just about everything about this place makes you feel as if you're in Mumbai.

It isn't too big a restaurant. In fact, we saw it just by passing by and decided to give it a shot. I didn't have high expectations from this place, but I was overwhelmed once there. Their concept is street style food. It isn't everytime that you see the restaurant having worked on that theme for the ambience as well. They have boards which look like the bus ticket from the city of Mumbai, to handwritten menu items on blackboard.

Now I'm a big fan of Mumbai street food, and there are so many things on the menu which are tempting, it was hard to decide.

Finally, we decided on the following:

• Kanda bhaji 
• Tawa pulav 
• Cheese masala pav

The kanda (onion) bhaji is a snack eaten in Mumbai and surrounding areas especially during Monsoon. It was served hot along with fresh green chutney and some fried chilli. They took care of the way the food was presented as well. It is these intricite details inspite of being a small place, which got me impressed even more. The taste was really nostalgic. I've had kanda bhaji at other places in Dubai but this tasted fresh and hot.

The tawa pulav. This is a spicier version of the normal pulav with bigger pieces of vegetables. The quantity looked small when served, but it was huge. It had the right amount of spice and flavour to it. It was served along with raita. I just couldn't get enough.

And finally the Cheese masala pav. When it was served, I was drooling over it. It had generous quantities of masala and lots of cheese grated on top. Better than what I've had till date. The pav (bread) was soft and despite there being lots of masala, it didn't feel soggy.

Just about everything that we had was delicious, and I find it hard to say something that wasn't right about the food. Everything was freshly prepared and served fairly quickly as well.
The staff is friendly too and are more than willing to help you tell more about what's their speciality here and help you make a choice. It is customer centric.
We also got to meet the owners of the place who happened to be there and get to know about how this place started.

The furniture that they have here also gives a feeling of Mumbai. The benches and the chairs that are there are just like the ones we have in the street food outlets in Mumbai. The benches do not have a backrest, which I think is because they've tried to give it a real feel. This is the only small drawback of this place as it isn't all that comfortable to sit.
 Apart from that, we loved every bit of it.

I look forward to trying our more items on their menu - like the misal and thalipeeth next time.