Mumbai street eats & Pimm's Cups

The project of a chef who noticed PDX lacked the kind of Bay-area Indian eats he found around town while working at Berkeley's famed Chez Panisse, Bollywood will charm you with flamboyant song and dance numbers the subcontinent's lighter fare in digs that look like a spice-road antique riot, complete with bathrooms rigged with a video installation meant to recreate the chaos of Mumbai’s streets, which leave most tourists totally pooped.

The heart of the menu is Southern-Indian chaat dishes (typical beach-side street food rarely seen in the US), including bhel puri (potatoes/ cuke/ tom/ mango on a base of crunchy puffed rice, topped w/ chutneys), papri chaat (potatoes, yogurt, cilantro, and tamarind chutney on a housemade cracker), and vada pav, which slips a chickpea-battered, deep-fried, chutney-topped potato dumpling into a roll, and is known as Mumbai's "poor man hamburger", so, “hamburger”.

There’s also an abbreviated menu of meatier fare like pork vindaloo braised in red chilies/ garlic/ vinegar; farm egg masala w/ a spicy tomato curry; and Goan-style shrimp w/ coconut milk, lime, chili, and curry leaves, or what Eddy does when you tell him that they’re not bringing out any more Goan-style shrimp.

Bollywood's also thoughtfully cobbled together a drink list that ranges from simple stuff like a cucumber-y Pimm's Cup, to the dark rum, cuke, and rooibos tea-sporting Paanch -- have too many, and you'll end up recreating the chaos of Portland's streets generally only seen when Voodoo Doughnut says they're out of Maple Bacon Bars.