‘Mumbai is synonymous with pav’: How Mumbai haunts are using soft shell crab, chicken xacuti to make gourmet pav fillings

For Mumbaikar Sudeep Awchat, pav is synonymous with the city. "Mumbai and pav go hand in hand like bread and butter," he says, continuing, "People have been eating it right from the 60s in the city, and then vada pav got famous and then omelette came in and people liked it. It has a great deep connection." The 37-year-old is one of many Mumbaikars, who have a close affinity to pavs and a rich history with the city. However, that has slowly been changing as more and more Mumbai cafes and restaurants, and hole-in-the-wall food joints have been catering to an audience that is going beyond the classic vada pav and samosa to enjoy gourmet pavs, or simply put gourmet fillings in pavs.

With this love for pav, Sudeep and his brother Acash started Poie and Pao in Mahim in 2023, it was one of the newer yet fewer places to dedicate their menu solely to pavs that came with a variety of fillings. These are not the staples but also include the familiar choris pav, along with evolved flavours. Sudeep explains, "My mother Deepa is a true-blue Goan who hails from Mapusa and loves cooking. So, it was her recipes that we wanted to present in a more casual or fast-food format and what better way to do it than with a poee or a pav? It is synonymous with Goan and Mumbai cooking." The Awchats wanted the fillings in the poees to be semi-dry so that people don't get their hands messy but get the absolute flavours of Goa. Besides Goan, the café, which comes from the family that has given the city some of its most beloved restaurants including Goa Portuguesa, Diva Maharashtracha and Dakshin Culture Curry, also has some other flavours including Chettinad Chicken and Kolhapuri Tambda Rassa, among others on their menu.

Even though it was familiar territory for the second-generation Awchats, Sudeep says they didn't want to associate it with the legacy names, and instead wanted to see how it grows organically. He explains, "We started Poie and Pao last year and ran it as a kitchen for three months to see how it goes and then converted it into a café. We took our time in the first few months and took a lot of feedback for the gravies and spices to finetune it. We made sure that Poie and Pao grew on its own."

Getting the flavour right is an important part of their offering. "When you bite into a chicken vindaloo pav or a chorizo pav, the amount of gravy and chicken that you get is a burst of flavours. Whereas, when you dip the pav into the gravy, you can control the amount of gravy on the pav but here you can't. So, we made sure the gravy is not too pungent and spicy because it is a big mouthful."

Staying true to their Indian flavours, Sudeep says their knowledge of what works with the diners in their other restaurants has given them an understanding of what they can experiment with here. The city restaurateur adds, "People love Chicken Cafreal, Chorizo and Xacuti - which are the top sellers. The Veg Xacuti and Chettinad are liked by the vegetarians." While the Chicken Cafreal is popularly known to be the original dish, what is this vegetarian version made of? "We make a grilled patty of various vegetables and saute it with the Xacuti masala and Vindaloo masala. In the non-vegetarian version, we have cubes of chicken because we want people to bite into the pieces of chicken while eating it," he adds. The popularity of their poee and pav offerings has made them recently include chicken cutlet and mutton cutlet in the pav, which they serve with a delicious mint coleslaw.

Mum's the word
While Poie and Pao started last year and have become popular with its Goan and Maharashtrian fillings, Pack-A-Pav has been dishing out gourmet fillings like soft shell crab in pavs for close to a decade now. It was started by another Mumbaikar Rohan Mangalorkar because he was a huge fan of street food, who initially wanted to just do food pop-ups and events. He explains, "Everything on the menu is my mom's recipe. While 60 per cent of it is from home, the other 40 per cent, we had to innovate once the number of outlets increased."

Wanting to be a lone ranger businessman, and previously a frequent club-goer in Mumbai, Rohan always wanted to enter the food business or event space but start small. The Mumbaikar adds, "We visited at least six-seven bakeries at the time to understand what breads they were making. I tasted burger buns and hotdog buns but realised something was missing and it was the local laadi pav, which is hardly Rs 3. So, I thought why not take the local laadi pav and innovate with it but keep it simple?" Growing up eating pav in Maharashtra and Mumbai like most other Mumbaikars who either dipped the bread in chai or ate samosa pav or bhurji pav, it was the answer. The restaurateur adds, "We did trials of 14 breads and that day there was no pav. So, I went down the road near my house and bought laadi pav, and it was a game-changer because there was nothing that tasted like that."

Once it started getting popular, Mangalorkar wanted people to make a beeline outside his shop like he saw abroad with hole-in-the-wall places. The Mumbaikar was lucky to find a 40 square feet space in Bandra and realised he had found his space and the word-of-mouth spread like wildfire as people wanted to pay more than 10 times the fare of roadside snacks for gourmet food with unique flavours. "We have done something as classic as a pesto chicken pav and even a gourmet-style soft shell crab pav," adds Mangalorkar, who also has one property called ‘Pav with Friends' where he invites chefs to experiment with flavours to just celebrate pav.

"We wanted to tell people that this bread tastes so good that you can just put butter, toast it and that will taste good," he adds while highlighting how he has had people tell him to do gluten-free pav or brown pav but Mangalorkar just wants to stick to his roots. However, he has taken the liberty to extend to the brun pav and has even made a poee sandwich, which is a part of the bread family.

Today, apart from the Soft-Shell crab pav, the Mutton Shammi Pav, which they have had for 10 years now, is really popular. Interestingly, Pack-a-Pav wanted to do a version of the Vada Pav because they didn't want to risk hurting the sentiments of Mumbaikars and their love for the popular snack. "We took the aloo (potato) and stuffed it with paneer and cheese inside, and with the masala you put in the vada. It is like an aloo tikki stuffed with paneer, onion, garlic and garam masala. So, when you bite into it, it is chatpata and is a burst of paneer and cheese inside. It is popular among the vegetarians," he explains.

While there are some innovations, there are some preparations like the classic Irani Chicken that Mangalorkar still relies on making at home. "It is my favourite and used to even eat it with ketchup back in the day but here I serve it with some green coconut chutney made at home, served with an Irani chicken egg patty, fried onions and a yogurt dip on the side," he adds. Today, they even curate an experience with the pavs and filings that can be done according to the kind of crowd you have including a Goan party.