Dave Malhotra comes from a mixed religious background. His mother is Roman Catholic, and father, Punjabi. But when it came to choosing an accompaniment to eat curry or rajma with, he’d lean to his mother’s culinary tradition of turning to pao [Portuguese for bread]. “As a kid, I would eat everything with pao. Even when I was studying abroad, it was easiest to buy gravy and eat it with pao. And travelling across the world introduced me to how bread tasted wonderful with different fillings,” says Malhotra, 37.
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Out Of Pao, was born in September, to offer classic Bombay pao with interesting fillings. Although rolling out the red carpet outside their Andheri West outlet during the lockdown was a risk, it was one that the team was willing to take. “My partners and I had been planning this for over a year. Surprisingly, we noticed that people were still ordering takeaways during the pandemic. It seemed like the right time to open our doors.” With two paos, stuffed with two different fillings of your choice at around Rs 200, the meal is a hit with the youth, he says. The menu offers six each in veg and non-veg options.
Taste test
We ordered Tokyo Talkies (Rs 240) and Shroom Vroom (Rs 240) from the vegetarian section, Live It Up (Rs 190), Lucy In The Sky (Rs 250) and Fishy Business (Rs 280) from the non-veg options. Shroom Vroom is basically mushroom patties with caramelised onion. It is their best-selling vegetarian pao, and rightly so. Tokyo Talkies—a panko crusted pao stuffed with creamy paneer katsu gravy, lettuce and miso mayo— claimed to be spicy but wasn’t. Live It Up is a spicy stir-fried liver and onion mix marinated in a sweet and tangy chilli garlic sauce.
Fishy Business, on the other hand, is a tempura batter-fried catch of the day with classic tartar sauce. If you love seafood, this should be your top choice. Lucy In The Sky is basically a trip to space, albeit briefly. The pao is stuffed with chicken minced patty along with cheese topped with charred caramelised onions on a bed of lettuce.
Served with peri peri mayo, it can also be had with simple tomato ketchup. We liked that the fluffy paos came with really cool sanitiser sachets. The only way to eat these paos is with your hands, so these came handy.
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