India Street Food

Fast, spiced, and built for eating on your feet.

⏱️ One popular snack has to be eaten within seconds of being handed to you, or it falls apart.

5 street food dishes from India — what each one is, why it's made that way, and what to expect when you order it.

🗺️ Open the interactive view Filter by diet & time of day

Signature street foods of India

Homegrown Cola · India's Favorite Fizz Thums Up It's the cola that Coca-Cola couldn't beat — when Coke re-entered India in 1993, it ended up buying the local brand instead, and Thums Up still… Thums Up is a strong, spicier, less-sweet cola launched in Mumbai in 1977, distinguished by a sharper fizz and a bolder flavor than international colas. It's sold from roadside stalls and…

Snack · Assembled to order Pani Puri Vendors fill it right before your eyes because it can't survive sitting. Hollow, crisp puris filled with spiced tamarind water, potato, and chickpeas, handed to you one at a time to eat immediately in a single bite.

Main · Fried Vada Pav Often called Mumbai's answer to a burger — for a fraction of the price. A spiced, deep-fried potato fritter stuffed into a soft bread bun with chutneys, sold from carts across Mumbai as a cheap, filling meal for commuters and workers.

Mash · Mill Worker's Meal Pav Bhaji It was invented as a fast lunch for 19th-century Mumbai textile mill workers who had too little time — and too little appetite for heavy food… A thick mash of potatoes, tomatoes, peas and other vegetables is cooked down with a spiced pav bhaji masala on a large flat griddle, finished with a knob of butter, and served with soft…

Dessert · Sunrise Sweet Jalebi Jalebi's fermented-batter method is thought to have traveled to India over a thousand years ago along Persian trade routes as "zoolbia," making it… A fermented batter is piped into hot oil in tight spiral loops, deep-fried until crisp, then plunged straight into warm, cardamom-scented sugar syrup to soak. Vendors fry it fresh in a…

More street food in Asia

Part of World of Street Food — 690 dishes from 118 countries. Photo credits.