Indian food is a family of regional cuisines, and the most popular traditional dishes to eat in India include biryani, butter chicken, masala dosa, chole bhature, rogan josh, pav bhaji, dal makhani and Hyderabadi haleem. The cooking changes completely every few hundred kilometres: the north cooks with wheat, ghee and cream, the south with rice, coconut and curry leaves, the east with mustard oil and freshwater fish, and the west with peanuts, jaggery and kokum.
This guide is part of our wider guide to the best places to visit in India.
This guide takes you region by region through the traditional dishes worth ordering on a trip to India, with what each dish is, how it tastes, when locals eat it and the cities where it is at its best. It closes with street food and sweets, a regional cheat sheet, and practical advice on eating safely and confidently as a visitor.
Those four big regional styles cover more than 30 dishes here. India has no official national dish, and the one rule that holds everywhere is to eat where locals queue.
Traditional Indian dishes at a glance
The table below lists every traditional Indian dish in this guide with its home region, whether it is vegetarian and what it is usually eaten with, from butter chicken with butter naan in Delhi to masala dosa with sambar and coconut chutney in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Use it to shortlist dishes by region before you travel.
| Dish | Region | Diet | Best with |
|---|---|---|---|
| Butter chicken (मुर्ग़ मखनी) | Delhi | Non-veg | Butter naan |
| Dal makhani (दाल मखनी) | Punjab and Delhi | Vegetarian | Jeera rice or naan |
| Chole bhature (छोले भटूरे) | Delhi and Punjab | Vegetarian | Lassi and pickled onion |
| Sarson da saag with makki di roti (सरसों दा साग) | Punjab | Vegetarian | White butter and jaggery |
| Rajma chawal (राजमा चावल) | North India | Vegetarian | Onion salad and yoghurt |
| Galouti and Tunday kebab (गलौटी कबाब) | Lucknow | Non-veg | Ulte tawe ka paratha |
| Rogan josh (रोगन जोश) | Kashmir | Non-veg | Steamed rice |
| Gushtaba (गुश्ताबा) | Kashmir | Non-veg | Rice |
| Amritsari kulcha (अमृतसरी कुलचा) | Amritsar | Vegetarian | Chole and tamarind chutney |
| Dhaam and kafuli (धाम) | Himachal and Uttarakhand | Vegetarian | Rice |
| Masala dosa (மசாலா தோசை) | Karnataka and Tamil Nadu | Vegetarian | Sambar and coconut chutney |
| Idli and vada (இட்லி வடை) | Tamil Nadu | Vegetarian | Sambar and chutney |
| Pongal (பொங்கல்) | Tamil Nadu | Vegetarian | Coconut chutney |
| Appam with stew (അപ്പം) | Kerala | Veg or non-veg | Vegetable, chicken or mutton stew |
| Kerala fish curry (മീൻ കറി) | Kerala | Non-veg | Red Kerala rice |
| Sadya (സദ്യ) | Kerala | Vegetarian | Rice and payasam |
| Chicken Chettinad (செட்டிநாடு கோழி) | Tamil Nadu | Non-veg | Parotta or rice |
| Hyderabadi biryani (హైదరాబాదీ బిర్యానీ) | Hyderabad | Non-veg | Mirchi ka salan and raita |
| Haleem (హలీమ్) | Hyderabad | Non-veg | Fried onions and lime |
| Bisi bele bath and Mysore pak (ಬಿಸಿ ಬೇಳೆ ಬಾತ್) | Karnataka | Vegetarian | Boondi and papad |
| Pav bhaji and vada pav (पाव भाजी) | Mumbai | Vegetarian | Chopped onion and lime |
| Misal pav (मिसळ पाव) | Maharashtra | Vegetarian | Curd and lime |
| Dhokla and the Gujarati thali (ढोकला) | Gujarat | Vegetarian | Green chutney |
| Goan fish curry and vindaloo (गोवन फिश करी) | Goa | Non-veg | Rice or poi bread |
| Dal baati churma (दाल बाटी चूरमा) | Rajasthan | Vegetarian | Ghee |
| Kosha mangsho (কষা মাংস) | West Bengal | Non-veg | Luchi or rice |
| Litti chokha (लिट्टी चोखा) | Bihar | Vegetarian | Ghee |
| Dalma and chhena poda (ଛେନା ପୋଡ଼) | Odisha | Vegetarian | Rice |
| Masor tenga (মাছৰ টেঙা) | Assam | Non-veg | Rice |
| Smoked pork with bamboo shoot | Nagaland | Non-veg | Rice |
| Momos and thukpa | Sikkim and Darjeeling | Veg or non-veg | Chilli sauce |
Popular traditional dishes of North India
North Indian food is the style most people abroad recognise: tandoor breads, rich tomato and cream gravies, slow-cooked lentils and kebabs. Punjab, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Kashmir lead the way, and winter brings the heaviest, most comforting dishes.
Butter chicken (मुर्ग़ मखनी)
Murgh makhani, as Delhi calls it, is tandoori chicken simmered in a mild sauce of tomato, butter and cream, usually ordered at a restaurant dinner with butter naan. The sauce is smooth, slightly sweet and gently spiced with fenugreek leaves (kasuri methi), which give it its distinctive aroma. The dish is closely tied to Delhi's Moti Mahal restaurant tradition, although which of its founders created it is still disputed in court. Many restaurants abroad serve a sweeter, creamier version; in Delhi it is richer in butter and smokier from the tandoor.
Look for it in Delhi's Daryaganj and Connaught Place areas, and in the Punjabi dhabas along the highways out of the city.
Dal makhani (दाल मखनी)
Whole black lentils and kidney beans go into dal makhani, cooked very slowly and finished with butter and cream. Good versions simmer for hours, sometimes overnight on the dying heat of a tandoor, until the lentils almost melt. It is creamy and mildly spiced, eaten every day and at festivals across Punjab and Delhi, and it is the dish that converts people who think lentils are dull. Order it alongside a dry vegetable dish and jeera rice or naan for a balanced Punjabi meal.
Chole bhature (छोले भटूरे)
Delhi eats chole bhature, spicy chickpea curry with large puffed breads of fermented, deep-fried dough, for a late breakfast or brunch, and the best shops sell out by early afternoon. The chickpeas are dark and tangy from tea leaves and dried pomegranate seed, while the bhature arrive puffed up like balloons. A lassi and pickled onion go alongside. It is heavy, so walk afterwards. The dish reached Delhi in the 1940s with migrants from Lahore, and Sita Ram Diwan Chand in Paharganj still serves nothing else.
Head to Old Delhi and the markets of central Delhi, where shops open early and close once the batter runs out.
Sarson da saag with makki di roti (सरसों दा साग)
Punjab's signature winter dish pairs mustard greens, slow-cooked and mashed, with flatbread made from maize flour, and it is made only when the greens are in season. The saag is earthy and slightly bitter, softened with ghee or a lump of white butter, and the yellow maize roti is crumbly and sweet. Outside the cold months it is hard to find a good version. Mustard is harvested in winter and spring, which is why the dish appears on Punjabi dhaba menus in the cooler months, often with a crumbly lump of jaggery on the side.
Rajma chawal (राजमा चावल)
Ask a North Indian about comfort food and rajma chawal comes up first: red kidney beans in a thick onion-tomato gravy, served over steamed rice with onion salad and yoghurt. It is simple home cooking, the kind of plate served at Sunday lunch, and you find it in office canteens and small family restaurants more than in fine dining. Jammu's small red rajma are prized for their flavour. Kidney beans reached India from Mexico, and Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand also grow well-regarded rajma. Cooks soak the beans overnight before simmering them in an onion, tomato, ginger and garlic masala.
Galouti and Tunday kebab (गलौटी कबाब)
Lucknow's Awadhi cooking is famous for minced-meat kebabs so soft they barely need chewing: very finely minced meat blended with spices and tenderisers, shaped into patties and pan-fried. The legend says the recipe was created for a nawab who had lost his teeth. Tunday Kababi in the old city is the name everyone mentions. Eat them hot at an evening meal with ulte tawe ka paratha, thin layered bread cooked on an upturned griddle. Tunday Kababi has been trading since 1905, and its galouti is said to use well over 100 spices. The classic version is made with buffalo meat; mutton and chicken versions are widely available.
Aminabad and Chowk in Lucknow's old city are where to go.
Rogan josh (रोगन जोश)
Kashmiri chillies give this red lamb curry colour more than fire. The lamb is cooked slowly in yoghurt and spices, so a proper rogan josh is aromatic and warm, scented with fennel and dried ginger, with only moderate heat, and it is served with steamed rice. The dish is served as a course of wazwan, the multi-course Kashmiri feast. The Kashmiri Pandit version uses no onion or garlic; the Muslim version often includes them. A royal wazwan can run to 36 courses, and rogan josh is one of the handful considered essential, alongside rista, meatballs in a red gravy flavoured with saffron and fennel.
Gushtaba (गुश्ताबा)
Gushtaba traditionally closes a wazwan feast: large, very smooth mutton meatballs cooked in a spiced yoghurt gravy and eaten with rice. The meat is pounded by hand until silky, and the gravy is pale, tangy and fragrant with cardamom. If you are invited to a Kashmiri wedding or find a restaurant that serves a wazwan menu, it is the dish to wait for. At a wazwan, guests sit in groups of four around a shared copper platter called the traem, heaped with rice, seekh kebabs and tabakh maaz (lamb ribs braised, then fried in ghee). Gushtaba marks the end of the main course, and desserts follow.
Amritsari kulcha (अमृतसरी कुलचा)
Amritsar is one of India's great food cities, and its signature breakfast is the kulcha: leavened bread stuffed with spiced potato or paneer, baked in a tandoor until crisp and flaky and brushed with butter. The dough is maida, fermented before baking, and it almost always comes with a bowl of chole, tamarind chutney and sliced onion. Visitors also join the free communal meal (langar) at the Golden Temple, where volunteers serve simple dal, roti and rice to anyone who sits down, which is one of the most memorable meals in the country.
Dhaam and kafuli (धाम)
Hill food is rarely found outside the mountains. Dhaam, Himachal's festive rice meal, is cooked by hereditary cooks for weddings and festivals and served in sequence on leaf plates. Kafuli, from Uttarakhand, is a thick, green, mildly spiced curry of spinach and fenugreek, thickened with rice paste and eaten with rice; look for it in homestays and small dhabas in the Kumaon and Garhwal hills. In Himachal, dhaam is cooked by Brahmin cooks called botis, and guests sit on the floor to eat from pattal, plates made of dried leaves. Each district has its signature dish: Chamba is known for rajma madra in yoghurt gravy, Mandi for sepu badi.
Traditional food of South India
South Indian food is built on rice, lentils, coconut and tamarind, and much of it is vegetarian. Breakfast is the highlight, served fast in busy tiffin rooms where a meal costs little and comes on a steel plate or a banana leaf.
Masala dosa (மசாலா தோசை)
Eaten for breakfast across Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, the masala dosa is a thin, crisp crepe of fermented rice and lentil batter, filled with spiced potato and served with sambar and coconut chutney. It is lightly sour from fermentation and crisp at the edges. Bengaluru's version is often thicker and reddened with chutney spread inside. Eat it with your right hand, tearing a piece and scooping up potato and chutney together. The masala dosa as a dish is credited to K. Krishna Rao, who popularised it at his Udupi-style restaurants in Madras in the 1930s.
The old-style vegetarian restaurants of Bengaluru, Chennai and Mysuru, where breakfast service starts early, make the best ones.
Idli and vada (இட்லி வடை)
The classic Tamil breakfast pairs soft steamed rice and lentil cakes with a crisp fried lentil doughnut, both served with sambar and chutney. Idli are light and spongy, and the medu vada is crunchy outside and fluffy within. Dunk the vada in sambar until it softens. Podi, a dry spiced lentil powder mixed with sesame oil, is the local favourite accompaniment. The batter is roughly four parts rice to one part urad dal, left to ferment overnight until it more than doubles in volume.
Pongal (பொங்கல்)
Rice and moong dal cooked soft with black pepper, cumin, ginger and ghee make ven pongal, a savoury, peppery porridge served at breakfast with coconut chutney and as a temple offering. The sweet version, sakkarai pongal, is made with jaggery and cooked for the harvest festival of the same name in January. During the festival, rice is boiled in milk in a pot until it froths over while onlookers shout 'Pongalo pongal!'. Sakkarai pongal, finished with cardamom, cashews and raisins, is also handed out as prasadam at temples after being offered to the deities.
Appam with stew (അപ്പം)
Kerala's Syrian Christian kitchens made appam and stew famous, at breakfast and at Christmas. Appam are lacy, bowl-shaped pancakes of fermented rice batter with soft centres and crisp edges; the stew, made with vegetables, chicken or mutton, is a mild coconut milk curry, pale and gentle, flavoured with whole spices, curry leaves and green chilli, which makes it a good first dish for travellers wary of heat. The batter is fermented rice and coconut milk, traditionally raised with palm toddy (many cooks now use yeast), and it is cooked in an appachatti, a small wok-shaped pan that gives the pancake its lacy rim. In Sri Lanka the same pancake is called a hopper.
Kerala fish curry (മീൻ കറി)
Kerala's everyday lunch is fish in a sour, chilli-red gravy soured with kudampuli, a dried fruit related to kokum, eaten with red Kerala rice. It is tangy, hot and deep red, traditionally cooked in a clay pot and often tasting better the next day. Along the backwaters, toddy shops serve it with tapioca, and fish caught that morning. Kudampuli, also called Malabar tamarind, is the fruit of a tree native to the Western Ghats; its rind is dried until it turns black and shrivelled, and it gives the curry a sharp, slightly smoky sourness.
Try the toddy shops and family restaurants around Kochi, Alappuzha and Kumarakom.
Sadya (സദ്യ)
A sadya is a vegetarian feast served on a banana leaf, best known during the Onam festival and at weddings, and it brings together more than 20 items: rice, sambar, avial, thoran, olan, pickles, papadam, banana chips and several payasam desserts. Dishes are served in a set order and position on the leaf. Some restaurants in Kerala serve a sadya lunch on festival days. A typical sadya has 24 to 28 dishes, and the Aranmula Valla Sadya can exceed 64. Pickles go at the top left of the leaf and the banana at the bottom left so servers know where to refill, and diners traditionally sit cross-legged on mats and eat with the right hand.
Chicken Chettinad (செட்டிநாடு கோழி)
Chettinad cooking comes from the Chettiar merchant community around Karaikudi in Tamil Nadu and is one of India's most aromatic and hottest regional styles. Its best-known dish, served at festive meals with parotta or rice, is chicken in a dark gravy of roasted spices, black pepper, fennel and dried chillies. Spices are dry-roasted and ground fresh, which gives the gravy depth as well as heat. The spice box includes kalpasi, a lichen, along with star anise, fennel and peppercorns, and because the region is dry, cooks also rely on sun-dried meats and salted vegetables. The cooks of Manapatti village are known as specialists in the cuisine.
Hyderabadi biryani (హైదరాబాదీ బిర్యానీ)
Every Indian city has its own biryani, but Hyderabad's dum biryani is the benchmark many Indians compare others to: marinated meat layered with partly cooked rice, sealed and slow-cooked so the two steam together, and served at any celebration. The kacchi version starts with raw marinated meat under the rice, which makes it trickier to cook and richer in flavour. Basmati rice, yoghurt, fried onion, saffron and whole spices go into the pot, and it usually arrives with mirchi ka salan and raita, dahi chutney or baghaar-e-baingan on the side.
The old-city restaurants near the Charminar and long-established biryani houses across Hyderabad are the places to order it.
Haleem (హలీమ్)
During Ramadan, Hyderabad cooks haleem in huge cauldrons and eats it after sunset: wheat, lentils and meat pounded and cooked for hours into a thick, spiced porridge, savoury and smooth and topped with fried onions, mint and lime. Outside Ramadan it is hard to find in Hyderabad, so plan around the festival if you want it. In 2010 Hyderabadi haleem became the first meat product in India to receive Geographical Indication status. It is slow-cooked for seven to eight hours in wood-fired cauldrons, then beaten to a paste, and it descends from harees, a wheat and meat porridge recorded in a 10th-century Baghdad cookbook.
Bisi bele bath and Mysore pak (ಬಿಸಿ ಬೇಳೆ ಬಾತ್)
Karnataka offers a lunch dish and a sweet here. Bisi bele bath translates as hot lentil rice: a hot, tangy rice and lentil dish with vegetables, spiced with its own masala and tamarind and served with boondi and papad. Mysore pak, a rich gram-flour and ghee sweet made for festivals, traces back to the kitchens of the Mysore Palace, where a royal cook is credited with creating it; his family's sweet shop in Mysuru still sells it. The cook, Kakasura Madappa, worked for Maharaja Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV in the early 20th century, and the original recipe uses only gram flour, sugar and ghee.
Traditional food of West India
Western India mixes sweet, sour and spicy flavours, and Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa and Rajasthan cook in very different ways. This is also the home of India's most famous street snacks, from Mumbai's beaches to Ahmedabad's night markets.
Pav bhaji and vada pav (पाव भाजी)
Together these two Mumbai street classics explain how the city eats on the move, mostly as evening snacks. Pav bhaji is a buttery mashed-vegetable curry with soft rolls, cooked on huge flat griddles with an alarming amount of butter and finished with chopped onion and lime. Vada pav, a spiced potato fritter in a bun, is the city's cheapest filling meal, eaten standing up with dry garlic chutney and a fried green chilli. Pav bhaji began as a quick lunch for the city's textile mill workers, and the bhaji usually combines potato, onion, peas, capsicum and tomato.
Go to Juhu and Girgaum Chowpatty beaches in the evening, or the stalls near railway stations.
Misal pav (मिसळ पाव)
Misal is loud food: sprouted moth beans in a red, oily, very spicy gravy, topped with crunchy farsan and onion and eaten with bread rolls, curd and lime at breakfast. A separate thin gravy called tarri is poured on as you go. Pune, Nashik and Kolhapur all argue over who makes it best. Kolhapuri misal is the hottest. Pune's version often adds poha (flattened rice) and leans slightly sweet and tangy, and the thin gravy also goes by the name rassa.
Dhokla and the Gujarati thali (ढोकला)
Gujarati food is vegetarian, mild and often lightly sweetened with jaggery. A full thali, a platter of many small dishes, brings dal, kadhi, several vegetables, rotis, rice, farsan snacks and a sweet, with servers refilling your plate until you stop them. Dhokla is the snack you will see everywhere: a fluffy steamed cake made from rice and chana dal soaked, ground and fermented, then steamed, cut into squares, tempered with mustard seeds, green chilli and curry leaves and served with green chutney. The softer, paler cake made only from gram flour is properly called khaman.
Goan fish curry and vindaloo (गोवन फिश करी)
More than four centuries of Portuguese influence shaped Goa's food. Fish curry rice, made with coconut and kokum, is everyday lunch, eaten with rice or poi bread. Vindaloo takes its name from the Portuguese carne de vinha d'alhos (meat in wine and garlic), but in Goa the pork is marinated in vinegar, traditionally palm vinegar, with garlic and chillies, and it appears at feasts. It is tangy as much as hot, and the Goan original uses pork. Xacuti, a roasted coconut and spice curry, is the third dish to know.
Dal baati churma (दाल बाटी चूरमा)
Rajasthan's dry climate shaped dishes that keep for days. Baati are hard wheat dumplings baked over coals, cracked open and soaked in ghee, and eaten at festivals and family meals with spiced dal and churma, a sweet, crumbly wheat dessert. Gatte ki sabzi, gram-flour dumplings in yoghurt gravy, and laal maas, a fiery mutton curry, complete the region's classics. Baati are tennis-ball-sized rounds of wheat dough kneaded with yoghurt and baked in a hot oven or earthen stove; tradition links them to the soldiers of Mewar, who are said to have buried dough in hot sand to bake. Read more on our Rajasthan page.
Traditional food of East and Northeast India
Eastern India cooks with mustard oil, the five-spice mix panch phoron and freshwater fish, and produces many of the country's best-known sweets. The Northeast is a separate culinary world of fermented foods, bamboo shoots, smoked meats and light broths.
Kosha mangsho (কষা মাংস)
Kosha means to cook on low heat while stirring, and in West Bengal that patience turns mutton, mustard oil, onions and spices into a dark, slow-cooked dry curry whose gravy clings to the meat. It is a Sunday lunch and festival dish, and in Kolkata it is paired with luchi, small puffed white-flour breads, or rice. Kolkata also adds its own biryani, gentler than Hyderabad's and famous for including potato and egg. Kosha mangsho was traditionally slow-cooked in an earthen pot over a wood fire with mustard oil, yoghurt, ginger-garlic paste and whole spices; many home cooks now finish it in a pressure cooker.
Litti chokha (लिट्टी चोखा)
Bihar's best-known dish is smoky, rustic and filling. Litti are wheat dough balls stuffed with spiced roasted gram flour (sattu) and roasted over coals; chokha is mashed aubergine, tomato and potato with mustard oil, raw onion and green chilli. Break the litti and dip it in ghee. You find it at roadside stalls throughout Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh, and in home kitchens. The sattu filling is mixed with garlic, ginger, onion, carom and nigella seeds, lime juice and mustard oil. Litti is rooted in the Bhojpuri region around Buxar and Varanasi, where it is offered during the Panchkosi pilgrimage and at the Lota-Bhanta Mela.
Dalma and chhena poda (ଛେନା ପୋଡ଼)
Odisha's dalma, lentils cooked with vegetables and eaten with rice, is mild, wholesome and close to the food served in the state's temples. Chhena poda means burnt cheese: fresh chhena is sweetened and baked until the outside caramelises and the inside stays soft. It is unlike any other Indian sweet. The chhena is kneaded with sugar and a little semolina and baked for several hours. It is a recent invention: Sudarsan Sahu is said to have created it after 1947 at his hotel in Dashapalla, and Odisha has marked Chhenapoda Dibasa on his birth anniversary since 2022.
Masor tenga (মাছৰ টেঙা)
Assamese cooking uses little spice, and masor tenga, a light fish curry soured with tomato, lemon or elephant apple, is tangy and refreshing with rice, especially in the humid summer months. Assam also cooks with bamboo shoots, herbs and duck, and a traditional thali is one of the most interesting meals in the Northeast. Tomato is the most common souring agent, but cooks also use Assam lemon (kajinemu), dried thekera, outenga (elephant apple) or star fruit, and rohu is a typical choice of fish. A traditional meal begins with khar, an alkaline dish made with water filtered through the ash of sun-dried banana peel, and khar and tenga were traditionally not served in the same meal.
Smoked pork with bamboo shoot
Naga food is direct and powerful: smoked meats, fermented ingredients and the very hot king chilli. This dish, eaten with rice every day and at festivals, cooks smoked or fresh pork with fermented bamboo shoot and hot local chillies. The Hornbill Festival in Kohima each December is a good time to taste food from many Naga tribes at one site. It runs from 1 to 10 December at Kisama Heritage Village, about 12 kilometres from Kohima. At home, Naga families smoke meat by hanging it above the kitchen fire for anywhere from a day to two weeks, and smoked pork can keep for up to a year. Fermented soybean (axone, a Sümi speciality) and fermented bamboo shoot, most associated with the Lotha Nagas, give the cooking its sharp, funky depth.
Momos and thukpa
Momos, steamed Himalayan dumplings filled with meat or vegetables, have spread across India, but in Sikkim, Darjeeling and the hill towns they are everyday food served with a fiery tomato and chilli sauce. Thukpa, a hearty noodle soup, warms you up on cold evenings. Meghalaya's jadoh (rice cooked with pork), Manipur's kangshoi (a light vegetable stew) and Tripura's chakhwi (bamboo shoot curry) show how varied the region is. Thukpa comes from eastern Tibet, and thenthuk, made with hand-pulled noodles, is the version most often linked to Sikkim and Ladakh.
Indian street food and sweets you should try
Street food is where many travellers fall in love with Indian food, and every city has its own specialities. Pani puri, known as golgappa in the north and puchka in Kolkata, are crisp hollow shells filled with spiced tamarind water and eaten in one bite. Samosa, aloo tikki chaat, dahi puri and jalebi are sold on almost every corner. Old Delhi's Paranthe Wali Gali, a lane off Chandni Chowk, fries stuffed parathas in ghee, and Indore's night markets are famous across the country.
For sweets, try gulab jamun, kulfi, rasmalai, gajar ka halwa in winter and, in Bengal, rosogolla and mishti doi. Finish with masala chai, boiled with milk, sugar and spices, and sold at railway stations and roadside stalls everywhere.
Best Indian cities for a food trip
- Delhi: butter chicken, chole bhature, Old Delhi parathas and chaat
- Lucknow: Awadhi kebabs, biryani and kulfi
- Amritsar: kulcha, lassi and the Golden Temple langar
- Mumbai: pav bhaji, vada pav, bhel puri and Parsi cafés
- Hyderabad: dum biryani and Ramadan haleem
- Kolkata: kathi rolls, kosha mangsho and Bengali sweets
- Chennai and Bengaluru: dosa, idli, filter coffee and Chettinad cooking
- Mysuru: Mysore pak and old-style breakfast dosa
- Kochi and Alappuzha: Kerala fish curry, appam with stew and toddy-shop food
- Pune and Kolhapur: misal pav at its spiciest
- Ahmedabad: Gujarati thali, dhokla and khaman
- Varanasi and Patna: litti chokha from roadside stalls
- Kohima: smoked pork and fermented flavours, especially during the Hornbill Festival
Seasonal Indian food: what to eat when
What you eat in India changes with the season. Winter brings sarson da saag, gajar ka halwa and nihari in the north; summer is mango season; the monsoon is the time for pakoras with chai and roasted corn; and October to November fills the sweet shops for Diwali and Kolkata's streets for Durga Puja.
Winter (December to February)
Winter is the season for sarson da saag with makki di roti, gajar ka halwa and nihari in Old Delhi, and for the food stalls of the Hornbill Festival in Nagaland.
Summer (March to June)
Mango season brings Alphonso and other varieties. Lassi and aam panna cool you down, Assam and Kerala turn to light fish curries, and kulfi sellers come out in the evenings.
Monsoon (June to September)
Rain means pakoras with chai and bhutta, roasted corn on the cob. Kerala serves the Onam sadya in August or September, and Ramadan haleem appears when the fast falls in these months.
Festival season (October to November)
Diwali sweets and snacks fill the sweet shops, which are at their busiest; Kolkata's streets fill with Durga Puja food, and festive thalis appear across the north.
Some of these food seasons move every year. Ramadan follows the Islamic lunar calendar and starts about 11 days earlier each year, so Hyderabad's haleem season shifts with it. Onam is set by the Malayalam calendar in the month of Chingam, usually late August or September, and the biggest sadya is served on Thiruvonam, the last day of its roughly ten-day run. Pongal falls in mid-January in Tamil Nadu, while Nagaland's Hornbill Festival keeps the same dates, 1 to 10 December, every year. Mustard greens for sarson da saag are harvested from winter into spring, so the north's winter dishes last into February and March.
Tips for eating traditional food in India
Eat where locals queue. A busy stall with fast turnover is usually safer than an empty restaurant, and freshly cooked, hot food is the safest choice. Drink bottled or filtered water, and go easy on raw salads, ice and cut fruit for the first few days.
Eating with the right hand is normal, especially with thalis and South Indian meals, though cutlery is always available if you ask. Heat levels vary widely: ask for "less spicy" if you are unsure, and keep yoghurt or lassi close. Vegetarians have it easy, since vegetarian food is everywhere and some places, such as Ahmedabad and parts of Rajasthan, are largely vegetarian. Himachali dhaam is traditionally cooked without onion or garlic, and Gujarati thalis contain no meat at all.
Plan your route by region: fly into Delhi, Mumbai or Kolkata depending on where you want to eat. Compare fares on our flight page and check entry rules in our visa section.
Planning a trip to India? Read our India travel guide, compare hotels in India or search flights.
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