Start from 77 curated places around Mumbai, IN, then choose the recommendations that fit your guests.
Restaurants & cafés
The Table
The farm-to-table standard-bearer of South Mumbai for over a decade, a two-level dining room in Colaba that sources vegetables from a restaurant farm and built the city's seasonal-ingredients conversation before that phrase had cachet here. The cooking is confident and global without the tasting-menu pretension.
Masque
A 10-course seasonal tasting menu served in a cavernous former textile mill in Mahalaxmi, where the kitchen travels across India to source hyperlocal ingredients and builds each dish from the ground up. Ranks in Asia's 50 Best Restaurants and is the most serious cooking in the city -- book well in advance.
Trails & outdoors
Marine Drive Promenade Walk
The flat 3.6-km seafront walk along the Queen's Necklace arc from Nariman Point to Chowpatty Beach, the city's most democratic public space where everyone from dawn joggers to sunset couples shares the same seawall. No elevation, no technical challenge -- just the Arabian Sea on one side and art deco facades on the other.
Bandra Bandstand to Carter Road Walk
A 3-km coastal stroll connecting the Bandra Bandstand promenade -- with Bandra Fort, views of the sea link, and the Walk of Stars -- to the Carter Road seafront, passing cafes, fishing activity, and Bandra's characteristic old bungalows. The western suburbs' answer to Marine Drive and far less crowded.
Things to do
Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya
Mumbai's premier museum in a domed Indo-Saracenic building in Colaba, holding 50,000 exhibits across natural history, art, decorative arts, and archaeology -- the Mughal miniature collection and the ancient Indian sculpture galleries are the highlights. The building is as interesting as the contents.
Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum
Mumbai's oldest museum in Byculla, restored to its full Victorian splendour after a major conservation project, holding the city's finest collection of 19th-century maps, photographs, cast models, and decorative arts documenting how Bombay was built. Less visited than CSMVS and more intimate.
Landmarks & sights
Gateway of India
The 26-metre basalt arch on the Colaba waterfront, built in Indo-Saracenic style to mark the old sea approach to the city, still functions as Mumbai's de facto front door. The action on the quay -- ferries to Elephanta, vendors, fishing boats, pigeons -- is as much the draw as the arch itself.
Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus
A UNESCO World Heritage Site that doubles as Asia's busiest commuter rail station, the 1887 Victorian Gothic building is frosted with turrets, gargoyles, and stained glass in a style that would fit comfortably in Oxford or Edinburgh. Come to gawk at the architecture, but also to watch three million commuters move through it.