If it’s seafood, it must be Pratap

Pratap Lunch Home in Fort is a pilgrimage for seafood lovers

Atiny, blink-and-miss eatery tucked away in a narrow South Mumbai lane is no stranger to Mumbai’s foodies. Pratap Lunch Home appears just another dot on the Janmabhoomi Lane in Fort, but the restaurant is a gastronomic colossus from the time the city was called Bombay.

Pratap Lunch Home is now in its 61st year. It started as a humble quarter bar with a tiny AC section added later on. The restaurant underwent a complete overhaul sometime in the late 1990s to emerge as a ‘family restaurant’, which in Mumbai parlance is a place frequented by families, and where women patrons and children are comfortable. The air-conditioned restaurant is almost always full, even on weekdays, for lunch and dinner (on a weekend, be prepared to queue up outside if planning a dinner there). The interiors are a tribute to the great Mumbai/Goan cartoonist and painter Mario Miranda; the murals on the wall depicting daily life in a fishing gaonthan.

THE FOOD

The reason Pratap Lunch Home took off in a major way is not only because of the food quality, but also due to affordability. A giant crab, or a lobster, or indeed a large Pomfret at Pratap costs one-third of what they do in more-fancied Trishna or Mahesh Lunch Home a few hundred steps either side. Bombil (Bombay Duck) stuffed with prawns, crab, lobster, and jumbo prawns in butter garlic sauce or barbecued (tandoori) remain the best-sellers, along with traditional Mangalorean dishes such as surmai and bangda pulimunchi (a spicy, thick gravy).

But it’s the old-world Bombay dishes that take me back to Pratap every time I’m in Fort. Surmai (Kingfish), tawa fried or deep fried, Pomfret gassi, neer dosa,

and steamed rice. The fish is fresh and crisp always; the gravies are tangy but not sour; the neer dosas are light and fluffy. And alcohol continues to be served in a ‘quarter’.