Cheese pav bhaji is the Mumbai street classic with one addition: grated cheese over the pav bhaji that melts into the hot bhaji. It belongs to the pav-and-mash family of Mumbai street food, where soft rolls are the vehicle for a spiced vegetable mash. The angle is enrichment, a sharp dairy layer folded into an already buttery, tangy mash, with the pav doing the same scooping job it always does.
The build starts from a finished bhaji. A mash of boiled potato, tomato, onion, peas, and capsicum is cooked down on a flat griddle with pav bhaji masala, chilli, and a generous amount of butter until it is thick, dark, and glossy. While it is still bubbling hot off the tawa, a heap of grated cheese is showered over the top so it melts down into the surface rather than sitting as a cold cap. The pav, soft square rolls, are split and toasted cut-side down in butter on the same griddle until the faces are golden. The plate is the cheese-topped bhaji, the buttered pav, and the usual raw chopped onion and a lemon wedge on the side. Good execution has the cheese melting into the heat of the bhaji so it threads through each scoop, pav that is crisp and buttery on the cut face but still soft inside, and a bhaji thick enough to hold on the bread. Sloppy execution is cheese piled on a bhaji that has gone lukewarm so it stays in cold dry shreds, pav toasted dry without butter, or a thin watery bhaji that soaks the roll and drips.
It is eaten hot and at once, the pav torn and used to scoop the cheesy bhaji, while the cheese is still molten and the rolls still crisp. The dish does not hold; cooling sets the cheese and softens the toasted faces.
Variations turn on richness and load. Extra butter and a heavier cheese blanket push it toward the indulgent stall version; a masala pav treatment tosses the rolls in the bhaji itself; adding extra vegetables or a fried egg shifts it further. Plain pav bhaji and the related masala pav are the parent dishes and each deserves its own article rather than being crowded in here. What stays fixed is the move: grated cheese melted into hot bhaji, scooped with buttered pav.