PAV BHAJI- THE TIME SAVER!

Pav Bhaji as a dish originated in the city of Mumbai, legend has it. Every day, numerous mill workers would have lunch breaks that were too short for a full meal. As they had to return to rigorous physical labour immediately after, a light lunch was preferred to a heavy one. Noticing the plight of the workers, a local vendor created the dish using leftover ingredients of other dishes available on the menu. Roti or rice, which would be saved for other dishes, was replaced with pav. Curries that usually go with Indian bread or rice were amalgamated into just one spicy mixture, the ‘bhaji’. The tasty, spicy dish was an instant hit with these mill workers, and eventually found its way into restaurants only to become one of the most loved dishes all over the city. The first stalls were located near the old Cotton Exchange, because traders waited for the New York cotton prices (in the ’60s, these were carried prominently in all Bombay papers) that came in late into the night and early in the morning. But soon the pav bhaji stalls spread all over the city and by the late ’60s such restaurants as Tardeo’s Sardar Pav Bhaji were packing them in.