When we aren’t at work, you can find us wandering the streets of Mumbai looking for good dive bars to visit, sometimes we find what we’re looking for, sometimes we get robbed, bur either way, we always come out with a great story. This is the story of a gigantic little dive bar in Santacruz that managed to elude us for 20 years; they call it Food Search. Before we talk about the bar, we’re going to talk about the food. Food Search’s food is just okay, nothing to brag about in the least, but not all that bad either; the drinks are pretty cheap, though not the cheapest we’ve seen.
But we still loved every bit of it, and you probably will to. Maybe it’s the gigantic Renaissance mural that nobody talks about or the fact that it’s right next to a dance bar that we’re way too middle class to visit, or maybe it’s the overwhelming smell of burnt tobacco because the whole bar’s a smoking section and their ventilation system broke ten years ago. We honestly can’t say. What we can say without a shadow of a doubt is that Food Search is one of those few places that manages to be amazing, even though it just quite isn’t.
If you do happen to find yourself at Food Search here’s a bit of advice,
1) Don’t sit on the first floor, that’s only for women, families who bring children to bars, and the gentry. We working men sit at ground level with our own kind, and the TV that plays Hello Brother on loop.
2) Don’t order the Prawn Koliwada, it’s really nice but costs 300 bucks, and that’s a bit unreasonable. But if you do have that kind of money lying around we couldn’t recommend it more, it’s pretty good. Or better yet you could invest that money in a local food website, the best of its kind.
3) If you insist on ordering gin please don’t ask for a Schweppes. That’s basically just begging the waiter to piss in your food. Call for a Sprite.
4) You really can’t go wrong with a nice Bombil Fry, which should cost you about Rs. 130, a plate of peanuts (which isn’t as much of a choking hazard as you might think) and a bottle of Haywards 5000, there aren’t too many perks in being a broke millennial, but we’d say this is one of them.
Do you know any cool dive bars that we haven’t covered? Let us know and maybe we’ll let you tag along.
