What is Vada Pav?

Vada pav is a study in what happens when you put exactly the right things together: a vada (a ball of mashed potato spiced with mustard seeds, ginger, green chilli, curry leaves, and turmeric, dipped in chickpea batter and deep-fried until golden) pressed into a pav (a soft white bread roll, historically introduced to Mumbai by the Portuguese, later adopted so thoroughly that its origins became irrelevant). Between the bun and the vada go two chutneys — a dry garlic chutney that stains everything red-orange, and a wet green coriander chutney — and sometimes a fried green chilli on the side for people who feel the default heat level is a starting point.

Vada pav originated in Mumbai in the 1960s as cheap, filling street food for mill workers and is now found at every Mumbai railway station, at street carts across Maharashtra, and at South Asian restaurants worldwide. The Telugu connection is significant: the wave of Telugu workers who came to Mumbai for factory and construction work in the twentieth century made vada pav part of their food landscape, and it traveled back with them. It's not originally Telugu food, but it's food that Telugu people made theirs, which is a different kind of claim and an equally valid one.