Dishoom

• Flavour maximalist

  Chilli, anchovy and lemon on everything

  5/5Fit 5 out of 5

  Almost every page delivers: gunpowder potatoes, a chilli crab masala and a Carrot & green chilli pickle on the side, with tamarind and chilli drizzles to spoon over anything that dares to be mild. The chaats pile sweet, sour, crunchy and hot into one bowl and the kababs come with marinades that do real work. The only pages that leave you cold are the porridge and the marmalade at breakfast, and you can fix those with a spoon of the chilli jam.

  Start with gunpowder potatoes

• Traveller

  Tastes the city before arriving

  5/5Fit 5 out of 5

  The day-long walk through south Bombay is the point, and the food follows the streets: vada pau from a Chowpatty stall, early chai at Kyani and Co., the stews of Mohammed Ali Road and a Rajabai Clock Tower egg named for a landmark. Café breakfasts, street snacks and late-night dishes each keep their own neighbourhood rather than being smoothed into one generic Indian menu. Pour a Bombay Presidency punch, read the stories between the recipes, and you will be checking flights before the daal is done.

  Start with vada pau

• Home cook

  Gets a little better every year

  5/5Fit 5 out of 5

  The basics chapter is the real prize: an Onion-tomato masala, the Makhani sauce and a proper stock are building blocks you will reach for long after you have cooked through the headline dishes. The dough work on Naan and the other breads, the home-ground spice blends and the long braises give a weekend cook plenty to learn, and the recipes come from a kitchen that has made them thousands of times. You will not need the cocktail chapter, but everything else earns its place on the shelf.

  Start with Onion-tomato masala

• Restaurant lover

  Wants to eat out at home

  5/5Fit 5 out of 5

  You get a restaurant book with dishes worth inviting people over for, starting with Chicken ruby rather than a weeknight approximation of the experience. House black daal gives a humble pulse dish signature status, while Makhani sauce speaks to your interest in the components behind the finished plate. You should want generous Bombay comfort rather than delicate tasting-menu presentation: the appeal is bringing a recognisable restaurant experience to your table.

  Start with Chicken ruby

• Old-school meat lover

  Meat, fire and patience

  4/5Fit 4 out of 5

  21 of 103 recipes have meat, 7 fish

  The grill and slow-cook pages are serious: a whole Lamb raan for a Sunday, trotters in the Paya, mutton stews and a stack of lamb kababs that reward patience with the marinade and the coals. Offal gets its due too, with chicken livers on toast served as a breakfast rather than an afterthought. You will skip the salads, the fries and most of the vegetable pages, but there is enough meat here to keep you busy through a winter.

  Start with Lamb raan

• New-flavour explorer

  Something unfamiliar on every page

  4/5Fit 4 out of 5

  There is plenty you will not have met: pakhala, a salted noon chai, trotters and slow-cooked stews from Mohammed Ali Road, and a pineapple & black pepper crumble that plays with the familiar. The pantry ask is real, with half a dozen masalas, pastes and drizzles to make before the main recipes sing, so build two or three first and let them pull you through the rest. It stretches you gently rather than showing off, which is exactly the pace you like.

  Start with noon chai

• Flexitarian

  Mostly vegetarian, most of the time

  4/5Fit 4 out of 5

  Of 103 recipes, 75 are vegetarian (42 vegan), 7 have fish and 21 have meat

  You can put jackfruit biryani or rajma at the centre of dinner without feeling that you have ordered around the meat. When you do want a meat-centred occasion, awadhi lamb biryani gives you a distinct alternative rather than making meat compulsory every night. You will pass over plenty of flesh-led dishes, but the substantial pulse, vegetable and paneer choices make this a convincing fit for your mostly vegetarian table.

  Start with jackfruit biryani

• Fitness-minded

  Protein, meal prep, no excuses

  3/5Fit 3 out of 5

  Batch the lamb seekh kabab and macchi tikka on a Sunday with a pot of rajma and you have lean protein and pulses that reheat for days, with the spice doing the work instead of sauce. The okra and the chaats are fried, the breads and the makhani-based curries are carb and fat heavy, and the dessert and cocktail pages are a write-off for your macros. Plan a cheat day around the breakfast rolls, because they look worth it.

  Start with lamb seekh kabab

• Light and healthy

  Light, colourful, balanced

  3/5Fit 3 out of 5

  The salads are your way in: a chilli pomelo salad or kachumber on the table with grilled fish and a bowl of yoghurt gives you the colour and citrus you want, and it all photographs beautifully for a table of friends. Much of the rest is a treat rather than a routine, since fries, samosas and butter-rich curries dominate and the breads come thick and fast. Finish with a small mango kulfi and call it balance, not a cheat.

  Start with chilli pomelo salad

• Parent of young kids

  Has to survive a toddler and a late dinner

  3/5Fit 3 out of 5

  The keema pau is minced meat on soft buns, the meatball curries are familiar shapes and a mango lassi settles any fuss, so there is more for small eaters here than the chilli-heavy titles suggest if you halve the green chilli and hold back the drizzles. Biryanis and the slow lamb dishes reheat well, but the samosas, puffs and fried chaats want frying at the last minute and attention you will not have at six o'clock. For after bedtime the Chicken ruby and a gin punch make a proper grown-up supper.

  Start with keema pau

• Student on a budget

  One pan, little money

  3/5Fit 3 out of 5

  A pot of rajma or pau bhaji costs pennies a portion, feeds a shared kitchen for days and needs only one pan, and the spice blends are a one-off shop that pays back across the whole book. Skip the butter garlic crab, the whole legs of lamb and the cocktail pages, which are restaurant prices in disguise. You will have to buy a few spices you have never heard of, but once they are in the cupboard the dal, chickpea and potato pages will carry you through a term.

  Start with rajma

• Vegan health foodie

  Plant-based, fresh and fuss-free

  2/5Fit 2 out of 5

  42 of 103 recipes are vegan, another 75 vegetarian

  The pulses are where you win: rajma and the jackfruit biryani need no adapting, and a bowl of greens turns a street-food spread into something closer to a plant-based meal. The paneer, lassi and kulfi pages are dairy by definition, the fries, puffs and samosas point to a lot of frying, and nothing in the index tells you what is plant-based, so you will be doing your own labelling as you read. Treat it as a mine of dal technique and spice pastes rather than a book that puts vegetables first, because it does not.

  Start with jackfruit biryani

• Quick weeknight cook

  Thirty minutes, one pan

  2/5Fit 2 out of 5

  On a Tuesday night you can manage the Parsi omelette or a chilli cheese toast, and little else without a trip to a specialist shop for the masalas the book expects you to blend yourself. The awadhi lamb biryani and the slow lamb stews are weekend or holiday cooking with long simmering and many components, and even the café breakfast rolls assume you have naan dough to hand. Keep it for a Sunday when the family is around; it is not a weeknight book and does not pretend to be.

  Start with Parsi omelette

• Beginner

  Has never fried anything

  2/5Fit 2 out of 5

  Start at breakfast, where masala beans and the Parsi omelette are a handful of ingredients in a single pan and the risk of disaster is low. The moment you move on, you meet home-ground Garam masala, deep-fried puffs and samosas, biryanis with several components and breads that need dough confidence you may not have yet. The basics chapter will teach you useful pastes and sauces if you stick with it, but this is a book that assumes you already know your way around Indian spices.

  Start with masala beans

• Low carb

  Few carbs, lots of flavour

  2/5Fit 2 out of 5

  Of 103 recipes, 75 are vegetarian (42 vegan), 7 have fish and 21 have meat

  You have promising starting points in Parsi omelette and macchi tikka, though the titles alone cannot establish how closely their ingredients fit your carb limits. You could put kachumber beside a meat or fish dish instead of bread or rice, but that is you adapting the meal rather than the book doing the work. With so much space devoted to pulses, breads, biryanis, potatoes and sweets, you would be buying selectively rather than cooking freely.

  Start with Parsi omelette

• Wine lover and Italophile

  Every page calls for a bottle

  1/5Fit 1 out of 5

  You will find no wine here at all: the drinks chapter runs to gin punches and an East India gimlet, and nothing in the book is written with a bottle in mind. The Lamb raan and House black daal are the slow, generous dishes made for a long evening, and you could pour a spicy Zinfandel or an off-dry Riesling beside them with some success, which is more than most of this spice-heavy menu allows. The provenance is honest and the sense of place is real, but a Bombay café menu is a long way from your Italian table.

  Start with Lamb raan

Written by CookCook with AI from the titles of all 103 recipes in this book and the publisher's description; the numbers come from our own analysis of the recipes, not from the AI.