A 1935 menu from Bombay’s Light of Asia offers a vivid glimpse of a city shaped by its port, railways and commercial life. As described by architect and writer Mustansir Dalvi, the restaurant served visitors and office workers with a menu that placed English and Continental dishes beside biryani, curry and regional specialties. It is evidence of one restaurant’s customers and choices—not a survey of what all Bombay residents ate.
A restaurant at the crossroads of Bombay
In a 2 November 2024 article, Mustansir Dalvi identifies the menu as belonging to Light of Asia, a restaurant he places opposite the General Post Office, outside Victoria Terminus—now Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus—and near Alexandra Dock and Ballard Pier. Dalvi also connects it to tramlines on Hornby Road serving South Bombay’s business districts. The location, as he describes it, put the restaurant near routes used by people arriving by rail or sea as well as those working in the city’s commercial centre. Dalvi’s account of the menu and its setting
The card addressed “Tourists, seamen, soldiers and civilians” and offered catering to “Principle [sic] Offices” in Government, Railways, Mercantile and Marine. Its audience was not described as a single community or occupation. The invitation instead suggests a business trying to reach travellers, servicemen, government and railway employees, and commercial customers.
Dalvi reports that the restaurant promoted itself as “the acme of comfort” and advertised “electric lights & fans installed.” Those details speak to how the establishment presented itself; they do not by themselves show how typical its amenities were across Bombay’s restaurants.
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What the menu put on the table
Meat, fish, eggs and familiar European styles
Dalvi describes three columns of dishes without category headings and notes that the menu did not use a “non-veg” label. In his account, meat, fish and eggs predominated: mutton, chicken, ham, bacon and sausages appeared alongside tongue, liver, kidney and sweetbreads. Fried tomatoes, onion and chips featured among the limited vegetables he identifies. Most dishes, he writes, were English or Continental in style, with sandwiches also on offer.
Indian and regional dishes beside Continental fare
The menu was not exclusively European. Dalvi lists biryani and curry, mutton and fish molly, and mutton baffat. He interprets molly as an Anglo-derivation of moilee, a mild curry associated with Portuguese and Goan cooking and coconut milk, and identifies baffat as a Mangalorean Catholic dish. These are Dalvi’s readings of the menu’s names and culinary influences.
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Dalvi also notes that beef does not appear as a listed dish, except in Bovril soup. A menu’s omissions can be suggestive, but this one cannot establish why a particular ingredient was absent or what other restaurants served.
Drinks and provisions from farther afield
The beverage list Dalvi transcribes includes Ovaltine, Vimto, soda-fountain drinks, ice cream sodas, gingerade, ginger ale, orange champagne and faluda. He also notes oranges from Jaffa, then in Palestine, and says canned potted meats, salmon and sardines could be opened and served on request. These are small but telling particulars of what Light of Asia offered its own customers; they should not be mistaken for a catalogue of Bombay’s supply or tastes as a whole.
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What the prices can—and cannot—tell us
Dalvi reports that the menu’s lowest listed price was one anna for a cup of tea and its highest was 14 annas for ham, eggs and chips. These figures make the card tangible, but they are prices at a single restaurant, reported in Dalvi’s 2024 article. Without comparable wages and prices, they cannot show whether the food was affordable to a particular customer, how it compared with other eateries, or what the amounts would mean in today’s money.
One menu in a larger history of dining out
Light of Asia’s mix of customers and dishes fits a broader history in which Bombay’s public dining developed across different settings and social groups. In his scholarly essay Dining Out in Bombay, Frank F. Conlon traces public eating from utilitarian eating houses and khanavals to Irani cafés and restaurants serving varied classes and communities. He cautions against a simple colonial-versus-postcolonial divide, writing that “there appears to be no clear break between the colonial and postcolonial period,” apart from some racially exclusive establishments. Conlon’s “Dining Out in Bombay”
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That wider account helps place the 1935 card without making it stand for the whole city. Light of Asia’s location and menu suggest how one establishment addressed a port city’s travellers, workers and commercial networks, while combining food traditions. They do not prove that every Bombay diner shared those tastes—or that the city once had a single, more cosmopolitan food culture that later disappeared.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What became of Light of Asia
Dalvi reports that Light of Asia changed its menu over time and eventually came to resemble other restaurants serving masala-heavy food. He also writes that a fire in 2018 so badly damaged the Kothari Mansion building that it had to be demolished, and that the menu card was the only survivor. That description of the building and the card reflects the account published in November 2024; it does not establish the site’s present condition.
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