Correct Food: Correct like your mothers lunch at Gharoba.
On the boundary between Lalbag and Parel on Dr SS Rao Road and Income Tax Office is the Stri Hitwardhini Audhyogic Sahkari Sanstha's eatery, popularly known as Gharoba. If you are in Mumbai and want to taste food that is just like what is cooked at home, this is where you should go.
On the day I was there, the food was vegetarian but it was correct, the way is should be, kind like Maharashtrian mothers would make, even the amount of salt and the constant complaints of the ladies who ladle out the food. It was fun to watch the burly men who rushed in hungry and traffic angry wait patiently for their turn at the counter, become meek and bend a little and listen to the constant chatter of the woman serving and don't complain when they demand exact change.
Not surprisngly, they deliver food in tiffin boxes to offices in the area. Wish I had known about it when I used to work close by, some years back.
While I was slowly eating my chapatti and bhaaji, the non stop talking of the many women who run the place (the men who are eating are silent) I was wondering how it would've been eating in a Khaanavali that served the mill workers in the last century. The rooms they ate in would've certainly been smaller, the spread on their plates slightly less heavy , the taste of the chapatti or rice or bhakri very different in that age because of the type of grains that were probably used.
The eatery run by an organisation that has many other programmes and a shop next door. More about them here by Jane Borges.
Try it.
