The first time that I was truly exposed to the sheer variety and diversity of Lucknow’s culinary spread was at a friend’s wedding in the city. It was a treat for the palate, to put in mildly. The live counters whipped up everything from varieties of kebabs and chaat, to regal Awadhi delicacies. There was the flavour-packed Lakhnawi biryani, and yes, desserts like Shahi tukda and Kali gajar ka halwa. Later, on that same trip, we went berserk savouring their street fare, including the famous sheermal from Rahim’s and other pokey eateries in Kaiserbagh.

If you’re wondering why I’ve possibly whetted your appetite on a Monday morning with this little culinary tribute to Lucknow, it’s because the city has recently been in the news with its pitch to earn a UNESCO honour as a Creative City of Gastronomy. Work is in full swing, and multi-award-winning conservation architect Abha Narain Lambah and her team are at the helm of this dossier, to ensure that the City of Nawabs gets its due. In the course of that conservation with Narain Lambah and insight into their proposal that was submitted to the world body, which appeared in this newspaper in edition dated June 13, 2025, she revealed several facets that gave Lucknow a strong advantage. From street fare to biryanis, their world-famous chaats, home recipes, royal Awadhi fare and their desserts all, and well-balanced vegetarian and non-vegetarian food, “it was a beautiful amalgamation,” to quote from that conversation.

All that talk made one think of Mumbai’s culinary heritage. For the sake of a conversation, I decided to look at some of the key contenders to showcase our city’s homegrown culinary heritage. The first suggestion that comes to mind is the Koli community. They are the city’s OG inhabitants, and their cuisine is a wonderful celebration of the city’s love affair with the sea since it was a cluster of seven islands. Koli cuisine, sadly, remains terribly underrepresented in the city, despite the sporadic push to support Koliwada fare by civic authorities and the smattering of eateries. Too few for a city that Kolis consider their home. A sustained effort by offering support to Koli F&B entrepreneurs to showcase their fare, could catapult their unique cuisine into the spotlight and provide a much-needed thrust towards elevating their cuisine, making it more accessible to Bombaywallahs and tourists alike. On the contrary, Koliwadas are facing an existential crisis in their home city. To deep-dive into those issues would require column space panning several columns of Bombayana. The underlying fact remains that Koli cuisine ought to get its due beyond the odd ‘Koli seafood festival’ or weekend kiosks that spring up for an occasional feel-good factor of a community that remains on the fringes of the city, fighting hard to protect their Koliwadas. The Mahim Seafood Plaza that operates on weekends seems to be the only feeble effort towards showcasing the cuisine.