Name: Modak (Mumbai style)
Prep time: 45 min
Total time: 80 min
Yield: Makes 12 modak
Cuisine: Indian
Ingredients: 200g fresh coconut, grated; 150g jaggery, grated; 2 teaspoons cardamom powder; 1 tablespoon ghee; 200g rice flour (preferably soft rice flour); Pinch of salt; 1 teaspoon ghee for dough; Banana leaves or muslin cloth for steaming

Steamed sweet dumpling with grated coconut and jaggery filling inside a rice-flour wrapper. Ganesh Chaturthi staple. Editor's TableJourney pick.

Modak is Lord Ganesh's favoured offering and Maharashtra's signature festival sweet, a steamed rice-flour dumpling filled with jaggery and fresh coconut. Mumbai's sweet shops fire up modak production through the 10 days of Ganesh Chaturthi in August or September, when families order trays for daily home-puja and the visarjan procession. Chitale Bandhu and Prakash in Dadar are the canonical sources.

3 editor picks for Modak in Mumbai, ranked by editorial score. All Mumbai signature dishes · Modak across every city.

Sardar Pav Bhaji ★ 4.6

Street food

tardeo · 166-A Tardeo Main Road Junction, Tardeo, Mumbai 400034

Sardar at the Tardeo bus depot has been the Mumbai pav bhaji benchmark for decades. Butter swims on the griddle; the masala is hot and the pav is buttered.

Soam ★ 4.4

Gujarati and Maharashtrian

chowpatty · Sadguru Sadan, Ground Floor, Babulnath Road, Chowpatty, Mumbai 400007

Pinki Dixit's Soam in Chowpatty has poured Gujarati and Maharashtrian home cooking since 2005. The khichdi runs seven different grains and the undhiyo.

Cream Centre ★ 4.2

Indian

chowpatty · 25/B Chowpatty Seaface, Chowpatty, Girgaon, Mumbai 400007

Cream Centre opened at Chowpatty Seaface in 1958 as a vegetarian sweets and snacks counter. The channa bhatura is the canonical dish; the hot fudge sundae.

Learn to cook it, or eat it with a guide

Modak makes more sense with someone from Mumbai explaining it. These are the classes and tours we have checked, with booking links.

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