Mumbai’s iconic restaurant, Bhagat Tarachand

An eatery famous for its Sindhi and Punjabi vegetarian cuisine

I first ate at a B Bhagat Tarachand (BBT) restaurant at their Vashi, Sector outlet when my office was close to their location.  Since then, I have tasted their food at their mall outlets and am waiting for a chance to eat at their first restaurant in South Mumbai.

The BBT chain traces its history to a restaurant in Pakistan that Tarachand Chawla, its founder started in 1895 in Karachi.  His legendary large-heartedness at freely feeding patrons who could not pay earned him the title, Bhagat or a kind person.  The founder’s children used the title when they started a vegetarian restaurant in Mumbai after India’s partition in 1947 and the Tarachand family came to the city.  BBT is famous for its Sindhi – Punjabi food and is one of Mumbai’s top restaurants of this genre though others like Nanoomal Bhojraj also serve similar cuisine.

The first or the original BBT restaurant is the founders started at south Mumbai’s Zaveri Bazaar, a hub of jewelry shops.  That restaurant soon became popular among local business people for its breakfast and meals.  Zaveri Bazaar traders start their day with a breakfast of aloo paratha, dahi, and lassi at BBT. Today, the Zaveri Bazaar is a two hundred-seater eatery with dining areas on the ground, first and second floors, beginning as a thirty-seater restaurant.  In the early days, BBT was a place people went to have a quick meal, and thus its common space did not matter.  As families started frequenting the eatery, the BBT management introduced air conditioning to offer a better ambiance to diners. As BBT is very popular among diners, the restaurant thoughtfully provides chairs for those waiting outside. 

The use of ghee, freshness by food preparation thrice a day, and immaculate service have endeared BBT among patrons.  The owners say that they use the saw ingredients at home as they do at the restaurant to vouch for the quality of food they serve.

BBT is famous for some dishes which are popular among most customers, and those are:

Kutchi Beer: BBT created this buttermilk drink with a mild sourness and a spicy flavor by serving it in green or brown colored glass bottles.  The restaurant adds the masala to the empty bottle before pouring the buttermilk into it.  I have wondered whether the bottle color impacts the buttermilk taste, and my theory is that the bottle’s darkness may make the drink ferment less and remain almost bland.  BBT serves their Kutchi beer in bottles or glasses as the customers choose.  It is a good drink to order there as the oily food makes diners thirsty which the buttermilk helps quench.

Papad churi: This crushed papad dish is another BBT invention. It has small papad pieces with a spice mix plus fried caramelized onion on them.  Most BBT diners order papad churi, which is spicy.   BBT also offers kicha or whole rice papad and kicha churi variants on its menu.

Punjabi thali: Though BBT has an ala carte menu, it also serves a Punjabi thali which it claims is more authentic than what most other restaurants serve.  The BBT thali has a sampler of all their popular dishes, including a sweet one and different vegetable side dishes for the three parts of the meal.  The Punjabi thali is a later addition to the original menu, which was mostly of Sindhi dishes.

The phulkas: The phulkas are amongst the most popular BBT dishes and are soft, and you can order them with ghee or butter.  They are unique in having two layers which BBT makes with Madhya Pradesh origin wheat flour.

The dal: BBT’s dal fry compliments its soft phulkas and has a layer of caramelized onions floating at the top when the waiters serve the dish at your table.  Most BBT diners order the dal as part of their meal to savor its unique masala that only this restaurant uses.

Though BBT lists more than one hundred dishes on its menu, the most popular ones are few, including those listed above.

The BBT menu had evolved over the years, with the third generation introducing the changes when it started managing the restaurant.  The third-generation owners introduced Punjabi dishes to the menu and increased the variety of the thali, which was a simple one with just rice, phulkas, dal, and lassi.  The restaurant’s kitchen has evolved too from cooking on charcoal to cooking gas in later years.  However, the restaurant continues to cook its dishes in brass and copper vessels like traditional Indian kitchens.  The upgradation included uniforms for the serving staff.

BBT restaurants also have a chaat counter at the entrance, which acts as a hunger quencher for patrons waiting to enter the restaurant for a meal.

The popularity of the original BBT has spawned numerous clones which use the Bhagat Tarachand name.  Though the clones also serve the same dishes as the authentic, only the original uses the abbreviated name BBT. The rest use variants of Bhagat Tarachand with suffixes or prefixes.

BBT is now a multi-city restaurant chain having eateries at Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Tiruppur in Tamil Nadu.  In the Mumbai region, BBT has nine restaurants, five of them in malls and the rest as four free-standing ones at Zaveri Bazaar, Pydhonie, Vashi, Mulund.  Their Svatra (meaning food for the gods) restaurant at the R-City Mall has a different name from the rest of the chain but has a menu similar to other restaurants.

BBT’s simple yet tasty vegetarian food attracts diners with its quality and freshness.  The restaurant has never advertised letting its food do the talking.  The restaurant did not even have a written menu for many decades as the owners wrote the dishes on a blackboard.  In 2021, BBT will be like any other modern restaurant with a printed menu, great ambiance, prompt service, and great food.

The BBT restaurants closest to Urbania are at the Viviana Mall food court and Sector 12 Vashi, and you can access the chain’s restaurants through their website: https://bhagattarachand.com/.