Vada pav is one of Mumbai's favorite sandwiches, its name referring to the key ingredients: vada, or spicy mashed potatoes that are deep-fried in chickpea batter, and pav, or white bread rolls. This iconic street food is said to have originated from a street vendor named Ashok Vaidya, who worked near the Dadar train station in the 1960s and 1970s.

He thought of a way to satiate the hungry workers, and concluded that the ideal dish should be portable, affordable, and easy to prepare. Ashok made vada pav, and its popularity skyrocketed, especially after the Shiv Sena, a Marathi-Hindu nationalist political party, started to promote the sandwich as an ideal working class snack. 

Aloo gobi is a traditional dish with origins in Northern India, although it is popular throughout the country, but also in Nepal and Pakistan. Its key ingredients are potatoes, cauliflower, onions, and a variety of spices, which are all slowly simmered and usually served with rice, bread, chutneys, or a cucumber salad.

Since no liquid is added to the dish (although extremely small amounts of it may be added), aloo gobi is reliant on the spices, including turmeric, garlic, ginger, cumin, coriander, and red pepper. It is recommended to garnish the dish with freshly sliced coriander and drizzle some lime juice over the top.

Aloo tikki is a flavorful snack that is popular in North India and Pakistan. It consists of potatoes (aloo) and onions made into croquettes (tikki), which are then flavored with various spices and deep-fried. The croquettes are a staple of every chaat stall in Mumbai and North India.

Aloo tikki is often garnished with onion, chutney, coriander, or hot chiles, and it is usually served with yogurt or chickpeas. In Mumbai, the snack is often topped with spicy curries. Although aloo tikki is mostly consumed in North India and Pakistan, it is also gaining popularity in the United Kingdom, especially in the East Midlands area.

Batata vada is a popular vegetarian street food item that was invented in the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is a potato fritter made with a combination of mashed potatoes and spices that is shaped into a ball, dipped in chickpea batter called besan, then deep-fried.

The dish is typically served with a chutney consisting of shredded coconut, tamarind, and garlic. Batata vada is also a part of a popular Indian sandwich called vada pav, consisting of batata vada and chutney, served on soft buns called pav. 

Ragda pattice is a flavorful and popular street food of Mumbai, consisting of two parts: ragda, which is a dried yellow pea stew, and pattice, referring to a fried mashed potato patty. It is typically served with various chutneys, then topped with papadi and sev.

Ragda pattice is usually garnished with finely chopped coriander leaves and onions on top. Although not much is known about the origin or the inventor of the dish, ragda pattice remains one of the most popular chaats of Mumbai beaches, sold by numerous street food vendors.

Bonda is a bite-sized fried Indian snack. Often referred to as potato bonda, it is made with a spicy mashed potato filling that is dipped in gram flour batter, then fried until crispy. It is believed that the original bonda, which includes only mashed potatoes, originated in southern India.

However, there are numerous varieties and similar snacks found in almost every Indian state. In the north, a similar variety is known under the name batata vada, and it is commonly offered as a street food snack across the region. Furthermore, in Kerala, there are regional variants which replace the potatoes with tapioca, lentils, eggs, sweet potatoes, or even minced meat, and the gram flour coating is often replaced with plain or rice flour. 

Aloo palak is a traditional dish originating from the northern parts of the country. Although there are many ways of preparing the dish, it’s usually made with a combination of potatoes, spinach, tomatoes, garlic, cumin, dried hot peppers, turmeric, salt, and oil.

The garlic is fried in oil until it browns, and the cumin, hot peppers, and turmeric are then added to the pot and fried with the garlic. Next, tomatoes, salt, spinach, and potatoes are added to the pot, and aloo palak is simmered over low heat until the water evaporates and the oil separates. 

Dum aloo, also called alu dum, is a traditional dish with origins in Kashmir. The dish consists of potatoes, tomatoes, and onions that are cooked together in curry or masala sauce. It is said that cooking dum aloo is an art because it needs to be boiled and fried just right, the spices need to be authentic, and it takes a lot of time and patience to prepare it.

Dum aloo is cooked over low heat in a traditional earthenware vessel (handi) that is usually sealed until the dish is ready to be consumed. Its name is a combination of the words aloo (potatoes) and dum (steam, or warm breath). 

Although it originates from Kutch in Indian Gujarat, this filling snack is also enjoyed in other parts of the country. Dabeli combines toasted ladi pav buns and a filling that is made with mashed potatoes and a spice mix usually consisting of coriander, turmeric, cardamom, fennel seeds, coriander, chili peppers, and other spices.

The filling is topped with roasted peanuts, pomegranate seeds, and sev — tiny, crispy noodles made from ground chickpeas, while typical additions also include different chutney varieties. Dabeli, which translates as pressed, is mainly sold and enjoyed as street food.