You’ll not easily find the name of this establishment anywhere but online, where its address synchronizes with an enterprise called Desi Food Galaxy, a storefront at the far end of a nondescript strip mall in the Somerset section of Franklin Township in Somerset County. Enter to find rows of horizontally positioned communal tables and a string of stalls to the left and right, some of which may be open and others dark and a little forbidding.

There is no sign outside to indicate Bombay Street Food Malvani Katta is within what appears to be a food court, but there is a woman talking on her cellphone at a rate of 2,000 words per minute standing at the back of a stall near the front. I take a shot and wave a hand at her. She looks, but makes no motion in response. She’s up to 10,000 words spoken when I feel intrusive and creep over to a small group of folks at the back of Desi Food Galaxy.

“Is Bombay Street Food Malvani Katta somewhere in here?” I ask.

Yes, I’m told, with a couple in the group pointing to the stall where I’d been. “She’s there,” a fellow says, not elucidating any further. He smiles.

I return to what has been confirmed as Bombay Street Food Malvani Katta and decide to wait it out. I look way up to see several screens above the stall, a sizable menu sporting dozens of dishes. There, in the uppermost corner of one, is the name “Bombay Street Food Malvani Katta: The Taste of Maharashtra.” Bingo! After 4,000 more words have passed, I catch the woman’s eye and interrupt her rapid-fire patter. I’d come to the conclusion she’s actually an auctioneer, conducting clandestine sales virtually, with a small, but rapt audience. But, finally, she nods at me and I’m rapid-fire in my request.

“I want to eat here,” I say. “Is that possible?”

Another nod. A pause.

“What do you want?”

“A lot,” I reply, perhaps with a tone of challenge in my voice. I name a few dishes. Her brow furrows. She shakes off one dish. It’s the one I’d most wanted. Every time I pause for so much as a second, she continues her auctioneer’s patter into her phone, so I learn to keep at it. I name dish after dish after dish until I think I’m being taken seriously.

Suddenly, maybe 64,000 words later, the woman I soon learn is named Sanjeevani Japa stops her conversation and takes my order, refusing to do a dish she says I’d need to call and order well ahead of time and insisting I try her poha instead.

For this, and all else that follows, I am most grateful, as Sangeevani Japa is one heck of a cook as well as a guide to the homey fare of Malvani, which sits within metro Mumbai, the city some still call Bombay.

Poha is flattened rice. It’s the quintessential breakfast dish in South Asia. It’s de-husked rice, pounded into flakes and cooked with curry leaves, typically spotted with potatoes, vegetables and herbs, sometimes jazzed with ginger and chilies and crumbled peanuts. I watch Sanjeevani cook it from scratch at the back of her stall, adding fried onions and finishing it with a scattering of chopped cilantro leaves. There’s nothing cheffy about it. There’s a whole lot of nani or dadi, though.

So it proceeds, with Sanjeevani cooking a dish, sometimes with her neck crooked to keep her cell to her ear, sometimes with both hands going at full tilt, chopping or sauteeing, building a dabeli or frying a cheese sandwich, her focus on cooking and cooking alone. When done with each dish, she walks it over to where I’m seated at the long table nearest her stall.

“It’s like a food truck, your set-up here,” I say to her after she ferries another dish to me. I’ve loved her poha, so rarely seen on restaurant menus in New Jersey, in spite of our considerable and growing South Asian population. Eat it and embrace it as comfort food, something akin to oatmeal but so right for savory accents. Sanjeevani’s is simple, warmed softly by curry with intermittent pings from chilies that keep you from being lulled into sleepiness by sheer comfort.

The ghotala is a splendid mess of eggs scrambled with onions and chilies, tomatoes in the background sopping up scents of ginger and garlic, and a hefty helping of turmeric pumping up the color of the eggs. Take a few spoonsful, straight, but please do as locals would and line one of the warmed buns Sanjeevani provides with a splay of chopped onions you’ll then top with the energetic scramble. Two bites in and you’ll realize you are eating one of the wonders of the breakfast sandwich world. It’s astoundingly delicious.

It’s also a bit hard to contain, but I won’t complain. If you’re more about neatness than I am, snag a cheese sandwich that, even in its so-called “plain” incarnation, is happily speckled with onions and chilies and smeared with chutney. Potentially messy (again) are the kathi rolls, which Sanjeevani serves with a side of advice: Keep one end cloistered in its enclosing wrap to avoid spillage of innards as you bite into the other end, then continue down the log-shaped line. I’m in need of taking photos to show you those innards – both of the spirited chicken keema, its minced meat sultry with browned ghee and garam masala Sanjeevani blends herself, and the achari aloo paneer tikka, its chunks of cheese and potato tangy with a mustardy spice blend and not shy of exhilarating heat – so I slice each open at the top and let ’er rip. Neat and tidy will have to come during high tea service elsewhere, on another day.

You’ll manage the classic dabeli just fine, I’m sure. It’s multi-chutney’d, its potato base a rough mash that’s more than infused by classic dabeli masala. It’s almost equal parts masala and potato here, that spice blend emboldened by a dominance of black cardamom, with coriander, cinnamon, cumin and cloves in support and flashes of amchur and kashmiri chilies bringing vigor to the spuds. You’ll catch the tartness of tamarind and the cool-quirky twitch of mint-cilantro-chilies chutney and be glad you’ve chosen to have peanuts on board for welcome crunch. Dabeli sandwiches are a particular love of mine and this one is especially fine.

If you’re in need of a moment of calm, call for the vegetable pulav, a one-pot that shouldn’t be mistaken for biryani as it’s more rice-focused, with accents pocked about, not layered and obvious. Here, and hidden from initial view, are peas, carrots, onions, potatoes and even long, skinny green chilies submerged within the base of basmati imbued with the subtlest of spice mixes – cinnamon and green cardamon, I’d say, with a little clove, fennel, star anise perhaps. It’s gentle and awfully swell.

I’m thinking I need to see what Sanjeevani thinks is a must-eat from her long menu. She doesn’t blink when I ask and rounds up in short order a vada pav, fat potato fritters sandwiched between buns glazed with egg wash and crowned with a salted whole green chile. She lines each pav with a trio of chutneys: one, very garlicky; the second a caramel-y sweet-sour tamarind; the third a rousing cilantro-mint blend. I usually find vada pav a bit on the heavy, monotoned starchy side. But this? With the flourish of chutneys and the feistiness of the green chilies? It’s a whole new vada pav and it’s a marvel.

By this time, Sanjeevani is talking to me, and not at an auctioneer’s pace, about how much she loves to cook and, yeah, is doing this in food-truck fashion, but in a stationery spot with larger fridge space out back to stash her perishables. While her three children were young, she used to cook for private parties and more on the order of a personal chef to keep herself home-based. Now that her kids are older, she’s trying out the food court.

You won’t need to hear “going once, going twice” to be sold on the sincerity of Sanjeevani Japa’s home-cooking.