Shore Excursion: An Indian Culinary Delight Tour

Just did the 3.5 hour culinary delights tour. Just the 2 of us with a guide and driver. The guide Alan, was a really good guide and a credit to his company. We visited various food establishments tasting a variety of local cuisine. All of which were really good and vastly superior to most of the Indian food you get at home. We travelled round the city and also saw where they make a lot of the spices. Looking forward to using some when we get home. All in all an excellent day thanks to Amaze and Alan.

We were met by our guide just outside the terminal "green gate". There were only 4 of us in the group and we had a van to ourselves. In addition we were taken to the city's major sights as well as some small local eating spots. We started with breakfast of dosa masala. We had snacks and more snacks followed by lunch in a Parsi restaurant and desserts which we opted to take back to the ship with us as we were too full to really enjoy them. Our guide was friendly and knowledgeable and offered us information on how to get to our next day's itinerary on our own. We enjoyed to tour very much.

We booked this trip via ShoreFox, cruise trip agent. We got full details of where to meet our guide plus time well in advance of our departure which was very reassuring. Our guide Leroy, was right on time and we set off in a taxi right away. We had been advised to eat a very light breakfast as we would be tasting a lot. Well, we had no breakfast and were glad we came on this trip hungry! First stop was Madras cafe for a southern Indian breakfast. If we had been on our own we would have walked right past, but we would have missed a great taste of India. Dosa with curry sauce and coconut chutney, Medura savoury doughnut. Really tasty. Leroy was a chef so was able to tell us all about cooking methods, spices as well as tourist highlights. We spent a short time at India Gate, the beautiful railway station then Crawford mafket. Leroy took us round the stalls and helped us buy spices too. The market was fantastic, it was the start of mango season, late March, and the aroma of mangoes was delightful. Wish we could have taken some back on board! Next taste sensation was at Jimmy Boy, a Parsi Zoroastrian restaurant. Patrani machi was the most delicious pomphret fish cooked in a banana leaf. It just fell off the bones and the coriander leaf paste on top was perfect. An accompaniment of pilau rice with nuts and berries was fantastic too I’m running out of superlatives to describe this excellent excursion. The food kept coming! Delhi Darbar at Colaba Causeway was where’s we had a meat course. Lamb samosas and chicken kadhai. I don’t like lamb but I couldn’t get enough of the samosas. So much better than the skimpy offerings at home, these were stuffed full of spiced, minced lamb in a very thin and crispy pastry coating. All drinks are included, we mostly stuck to bottled water. The tea we tried was not really to our taste, too sweet and milky, but fun to try. We thought we were finished eating, but we were taken to a traditional sweet shop to buy some treats, no idea what they were, very sweet and yummy. Leroy wanted us to try more but we were stuffed by then! For $113 we had booked a 3 hour trip. We were out for 4 hours. What a fabulous trip and one that we would highly recommend to both cruise passengers or visitors to Mumbai. Amaze tours lived up to their name and Leroy was the best guide. Big thank you Leroy.