Vada Pav: The Plant-Based Mumbai Street Burger Everyone Should Try Once
India is the land of flavorful food and is particularly famous for its hearty and spicy curries like chicken tikka masala and butter chicken. One food from India that you may not have tried yet and that should be added to your list is vada pav (pronounced: va-dah pow). This famous Mumbai street food is sometimes called the Bombay burger and is a completely vegetarian sandwich made with two buttered buns, a mashed potato and herb fried patty, and a delicious chutney. Chutney is the Indian word for sauce, and on vada pav, it is often made from tamarind, coconut, or coriander.
But just listing the ingredients alone won't do it justice. Vada pav is all at once spicy, creamy, buttery, sour, and rich, or as Bon Appétit puts it, "the carb-on-carb-on-carb snack of our dreams". It's no wonder that vada pav is one of the most popular street foods in India's largest metropolis.
The rise of vada pav
According to the Times of India, vada pav was first created in the 1960s in a train station in Mumbai. Ashoka Vaidya, the inventor, already had a street food stall in the station that was selling vada (deep-fried fritters), and his stall was located next to another that was selling omelet pav (omelet on bread). One day, he decided to put the two together and the rest is history. Vada pav quickly took off and many new stalls opened to sell the working-class snack. By the time McDonald's came to India in the '90s, vada pav was so widespread and popular that the burger chain had a hard time breaking into the local market.
Today, vada pav continues to reign supreme in Mumbai and has spread across India. You can even find people selling vada pav in the U.S. in major cities like Los Angeles and New York.
How to make your own vada pav
Don't live near any vada pav sellers? No problem. With the right ingredients and a few spices, you can make a Mumbai-style vada pav yourself. The first thing you will need to find is the correct bread. For vada pav, sellers tend to use small soft white-bread buns, like the ones used for sliders.
Once you have your buns, go ahead and toast them in butter or ghee (clarified butter) and set them aside. Now you will want to make your chutney and vada. The Guardian recommends making a red chutney with coconut, garlic, and chili powder. You can also make a classic Indian green mint and coriander chutney. For the vada, mix mashed potatoes with fresh garlic, ginger, coriander, mustard seeds, turmeric, and preferably asafoetida (also known as hing). Then you form the potato mixture into patties with your hands, coat them in gram (chickpea) flour, and deep fry them until golden. After that, all that's left is putting your delicious sandwich together!