Where Mewari cooking comes from
A dry land: Mewar is greener than the desert to its west, but still a land of short rains and long dry seasons.
What the hills grow: maize on terraced fields, wheat and barley in winter, and lentils and pulses that keep well in storage.
Food built for that life: grains, ghee, buttermilk, dried beans and berries, with spices that preserve as well as flavour.
- Hill crops
- Maize, wheat, barley, lentils
- Staples
- Grains, ghee, buttermilk, dried beans
- Royal kitchens
- Game, now made with mutton
- Merchant kitchens
- Jain and Vaishnav, vegetarian
- Temple kitchens
- Nathdwara, an hour north
- Why so much flour and lentil: fresh green vegetables were a luxury in many villages for much of the year.
- The royal kitchens: the Maharanas' cooks were famous for game cooked over fire, and a few of those dishes survive with mutton in place of the hunt.
- The merchant families: Mewar's Jain and Vaishnav households kept strictly vegetarian kitchens and gave the city its love of sweets, fried snacks and careful, refined cooking.
- The temple kitchens: at Nathdwara, food is offered to Shrinathji many times a day, setting a standard of devotion and abundance for every festival meal in the region.
- The neighbours: Gujarati sweetness in some dals, Malwa's morning poha and the north Indian restaurant menu everywhere.
- Where to find the real thing: in homes, at weddings and in a handful of good dining halls. Our wider food of Rajasthan guide covers the whole state.
The dishes to look for
- Baati
- Hard wheat bread baked in embers
- Churma
- Baati crushed with ghee and sugar
- Gatte
- Gram-flour dumplings in yoghurt gravy
- Ker sangri
- Wild berry and dried bean
- Raab
- Warm maize or millet porridge
- Poha
- Flattened rice with peanuts and sev
Dal baati churma, the dish every family claims
The baati: a hard, round bread of coarse wheat flour, traditionally baked in the embers of a dung or wood fire until the crust cracks.
How it's eaten: broken open, drowned in ghee and eaten with a thick dal of mixed lentils.
- The churma: baati crushed with ghee and sugar or jaggery into a sweet, crumbly mixture.
- At every feast: every wedding and festival meal in Mewar includes it, and families argue happily about whose is best.
- Lunch, not dinner: it is heavy. Our dal baati churma recipe explains how it is made at home.
Makki ki roti and the winter table
Maize season: in the cold months Mewari villages switch from wheat to maize.
- The bread: thick maize flatbreads patted out by hand and cooked on an iron griddle over wood, eaten hot with white butter or ghee, jaggery and greens.
- Raab: a warm, sour porridge of maize or millet flour cooked in buttermilk, considered good for the body in winter.
- Ask for them: humble foods, rarely on menus, but in a village or family kitchen they are served with pride.
Gatte ki sabzi
The dumplings: gram flour, spiced and boiled, then sliced and simmered in a gravy of yoghurt and spices.
- Born of necessity: a rich curry without fresh vegetables, now one of the glories of Rajasthani vegetarian cooking.
- At weddings: often served in Mewar, sometimes as a rice dish called gatte ka pulao.
Ker sangri and panchkuta
The ingredients: ker is a small, sour wild berry, and sangri the long dried bean of the khejri tree, both gathered in western Rajasthan and stored for the year.
- The dish: cooked with oil, spices and dried red chilli, tangy and chewy, and it keeps for days, which made it perfect for travel.
- Panchkuta: adds other dried desert ingredients for a richer mix. Our journal explains ker sangri.
Papad ki sabzi and other clever curries
Sides become curries: papad ki sabzi is crisp lentil wafers softened in spiced yoghurt.
- More of the same idea: curries of dried mango, of whole green chillies and of fried gram-flour noodles.
- One story: each makes delicious food from what keeps in a hot, dry land.
Breakfast, kachori and poha
Street breakfasts: Udaipur breakfasts out, at stalls around the old city and the bazaars.
- Kachori: a flaky fried pastry filled with spiced lentils, with a thin, tangy kadhi or sweet tamarind chutney.
- Poha: flattened rice with onion, turmeric and peanuts, topped with crunchy sev, a taste from neighbouring Malwa.
- Timing: both are best before about ten, straight from the pan.
The royal kitchens and the hunt
Court food: in the old palaces meat was the food of the Rajput court, cooked by specialist cooks, and often by the noblemen themselves after a hunt.
- Made for fire: simple in method and bold in flavour, designed for iron pots and the outdoors.
- Today: with hunting long forbidden, the recipes are made with goat or chicken.
- Where to taste them: in the palace hotels, at a private palace dinner, or in a family that keeps the old recipes.
Safed maas
- White meat: mutton cooked slowly in a pale sauce of yoghurt, cream and ground nuts, perfumed with cardamom and with no red chilli at all.
- A court dish: rich, mild and elegant, and the Mewar kitchens are known for it.
Maas ke soole
Skewers: marinated meat smoked and cooked over coals, sometimes with a fragrant smoke trapped under a lid.
- Hunting-camp food: made with whatever had been shot that day.
- Order it: on a palace terrace on a winter night.
Laal maas and jungli maas
Laal maas: mutton in a fiery red gravy of dried chillies, the most famous Rajput meat dish, found across Rajasthan.
- Jungli maas: the meat of the forest, the true hunter's dish, cooked with little more than ghee, salt and dried red chillies.
- Milder if you like: ask for both to be toned down. Our laal maas recipe tells the story.
Sweets, and when to eat them
- Monsoon
- Ghevar, for Teej and Raksha Bandhan
- Holi
- Malpua with rabri
- Diwali
- Mohanthal, laddoos, barfis
- Winter
- Gum and jaggery laddoos
- Makar Sankranti
- Sesame brittle and laddoos
Ghevar, the taste of Teej
What it is: a large, lacy disc of fried batter soaked in sugar syrup, sometimes topped with thickened milk and nuts.
- Strictly seasonal: it appears in the monsoon, around Teej and Raksha Bandhan, and almost disappears at other times.
- A family gift: families send boxes of it to married daughters for Teej. Read about ghevar and Teej.
Malpua and the festival sweets
Malpua: small, thick pancakes fried in ghee and soaked in syrup, made at Holi and other festivals.
- Rabri: milk slowly reduced to a thick, sweet cream, often served alongside.
- Around Diwali: the shops fill with mohanthal, a fudge of gram flour, ghee and sugar, and laddoos and barfis of every kind.
Winter sweets and Makar Sankranti
Warming laddoos: wheat flour, ghee, jaggery and edible gum, believed to keep the body warm.
- In January: around Makar Sankranti the bazaars sell sesame brittle and sesame laddoos, given as gifts.
- The full list: our Rajasthani sweets guide.
Street food, and how to eat it safely
Gentler than Jaipur: Udaipur's street food is more limited than Jaipur's or Jodhpur's, but there is plenty to enjoy.
On Fateh Sagar: carts sell roasted corn, ice cream and chaat in the evenings.
In the bazaars: kachori, samosas, fresh jalebis coiled straight into hot oil, and mirchi bada, a large green chilli stuffed with spiced potato and fried in gram-flour batter.
- Evenings
- Fateh Sagar embankment
- Bazaars
- Bada Bazaar and the clock tower area
- Mornings
- Tea stalls with chai in small glasses
- With a guide
- Our food walks
- Go with us: our guides lead food walks to stalls they know well. On your own, these rules help.
- Eat where the locals queue: a busy stall turns over its food quickly, and the oil is hot.
- Cooked in front of you: choose food served hot, such as kachori, jalebi and roasted corn.
- Avoid: raw salads, cut fruit and chutneys that have been sitting out, especially in the hot months.
- Water: drink bottled or filtered water, and skip ice unless you know where it comes from.
- Go gently: with chilli and ghee in the first days of a trip.
- Be prepared: carry hand sanitiser and ask your guide before trying anything unusual. Read our health and safety page.
Temple kitchens and community feasts
Food as worship: at Nathdwara, the temple of Shrinathji, a form of Krishna as a child, the god is offered meals many times a day.
Festival offerings: on great festivals dozens of dishes and sweets are arranged before him.
Prasad: afterwards the food becomes blessed food, shared with devotees or sold in the lanes around the temple.
- Treated with reverence: local families treat even a small packet of temple sweets bought near the gate with care. Read our guide to Nathdwara.
- Wedding cauldrons: Mewari communities still cook in huge iron cauldrons for hundreds of guests.
- Pangat: traditionally guests sat in long rows on the ground while hosts and relatives moved along with buckets of dal, baskets of puris and trays of sweets.
- Where it survives: many weddings now use buffets, but the old style lives on in villages and at some community feasts.
- If you are invited: accept, and eat everything that is served to you.
- Joining a meal: we can sometimes arrange a community meal or festival kitchen through families we know. It is not a show, and we only do it where you will be welcome.
Vegetarian and Jain food
Vegetarian by faith: much of Udaipur is, and its restaurants and dining halls reflect it.
A full thali: a good one holds a dozen vegetarian dishes, and almost every menu has more vegetarian choices than meat.
- Vegetarian
- Understood everywhere
- Jain
- No meat, fish, eggs or root vegetables
- Jain on request
- At many restaurants and palace hotels
- Vegan
- Tell us; dairy is in almost everything
- No explaining needed: hotels and restaurants understand vegetarian needs well.
- Jain food: Jainism, long followed by Mewar's merchant families, teaches ahimsa, non-violence towards all living things.
- Root vegetables: strict Jains avoid onions, garlic, potatoes and carrots, because pulling them up harms the whole plant and the tiny creatures in the soil.
- After sunset: some Jains also avoid eating.
- On request: many Udaipur restaurants offer Jain versions of their dishes, and the palace hotels are used to Jain guests.
- Vegans: tell us, because ghee, butter, yoghurt and milk appear in almost every Rajasthani dish.
The food of the hills and villages
Hill communities: the hills of southern Mewar are home to Bhil and other communities who have farmed and gathered in these forests for centuries.
Seasonal and resourceful: maize and millet breads, lentils, wild greens after the rains and forest produce in its season.
- Mahua: the sweet flowers of the mahua tree are dried and eaten or used in drinks.
- Rarely sold: few visitors taste this food, but on a village visit with a guide who knows the families you may be offered maize roti from the fire with buttermilk and a simple vegetable.
- Near the city in winter: fresh chickpea greens, mustard leaves and spinach, cooked with ghee and eaten with maize bread.
- In the monsoon: wild mushrooms and greens appear in the markets for a few weeks.
- Our village visits: our village visits include a meal in a family home, and we make sure the family is paid properly for its hospitality.
What to drink
Chai: sweet, milky tea boiled with ginger or cardamom, drunk all day from small glasses at roadside stalls.
Chaas: thin, salted buttermilk spiced with roasted cumin, the best drink for a hot day and for digestion after a heavy meal.
- Lassi: thick, sweet yoghurt drink, sometimes with saffron and cardamom. Read about lassi in Jaipur to compare.
- Aam panna: a sweet-sour drink of raw green mango, made in the hot months to cool the body.
- Thandai: chilled milk with nuts, fennel and spices, drunk at Holi and Shivratri.
- Alcohol: available in hotels and licensed restaurants, but not on dry days, which include some national and religious holidays. See our page on dry days and alcohol.
Where we like to eat
A thali at Natraj Dining Hall
A local favourite: a long-running dining hall much loved by Udaipur families.
- The thali: unlimited vegetarian Rajasthani dishes, with dal, gatte, kadhi, ker sangri, baati and sweets, and waiters who keep filling your bowls until you stop them.
- Simple and busy: very good value. Go at lunch, and arrive hungry.
Millets of Mewar
- A pioneer: a health-food restaurant in the old city near the lake, cooking with millets and local produce.
- The menu: Mewari dishes alongside lighter food, for something fresh and wholesome between richer meals.
Lakeside and rooftop dinners
Ambrai: on the ghat of the same name, facing the City Palace and Jag Mandir across the water. One of the most popular lakeside restaurants, so book ahead.
- Upre: a rooftop restaurant above Lake Pichola with wide views.
- Choose carefully: many old-city rooftops look at the lit palace, but the food varies a great deal.
- Our list: the best rooftop restaurants in Udaipur names the ones we trust, and we book rooftop dinners for guests.
The palace hotels
Royal cooking at its most refined: the restaurants of the palace and lakeside hotels are hard to beat.
Rajasthani and more: the Taj Lake Palace, The Oberoi Udaivilas and The Leela Palace all serve Rajasthani dishes alongside other menus.
- Inside the City Palace: its hotels serve dinner with views over the lake.
- The Lake Palace: the island belongs to the Taj Lake Palace hotel. Whether non-residents can book a meal there has changed over the years, so we check for your dates.
- Compare them: our luxury hotels in Udaipur guide.
Learning to cook Mewari food
In home kitchens: several women in the old city teach the everyday food of a Udaipur family: dal, a seasonal vegetable, rotis and parathas, often with chai and a simple sweet.
Relaxed and personal: you eat what you cook together at the end.
- Home kitchens
- Everyday family food
- Private class
- Starts at the vegetable market
- Haveli class
- Royal Rajput dishes
- Village morning
- Maize breads on a wood fire
- Our preference: private classes that start with a walk through the morning vegetable market, learning which spices to buy, then cooking at your own pace.
- Grander: our haveli cooking class brings in a cook trained in the Rajput royal tradition to teach safed maas, maas ke soole or a full vegetarian feast in a heritage courtyard.
- In a village: a winter morning with a family outside Udaipur, cooking maize breads on a wood fire.
- Matching you: tell us what you would like to learn and how much time you have, and we will find the right cook.
A day of eating in Udaipur
Early: chai and a hot kachori with kadhi from a busy stall in the lanes near Jagdish Temple, or poha with sev and a squeeze of lime.
Mid-morning: walk the vegetable and spice market with a guide, and buy a little of whatever is in season.
- Lunch: a Mewari thali at a dining hall full of local families, then a glass of chaas and a long rest.
- Late afternoon: a sweet shop for whatever the season brings, ghevar in the monsoon or a fresh jalebi at any time.
- Dusk: roasted corn with lime and chilli among the crowds on the Fateh Sagar embankment.
- Dinner: facing the lit City Palace, on a rooftop or the water, with safed maas or maas ke soole if you eat meat, and gatte with hot breads if you do not.
At a Mewari table
Right hand: eat with your right hand when eating with your hands. Use the left for passing dishes or holding a glass.
Wash before and after: in homes and dining halls, you will be shown where.
- Stopping refills: in a thali restaurant, put your hand gently over the bowl or plate.
- Try a little of everything: refusing outright can seem unkind, but a polite no after a second helping is understood.
- Small portions: leaving food is considered wasteful, so take a little and ask for more.
- On the floor: in temples and some homes, food may be served on leaf plates or eaten seated on the floor. Sit cross-legged or with legs to one side, never with feet pointing at the food or at people.
- Greeting: say khamma ghani to your host and thank them at the end. A compliment to the cook is always welcome. Read our etiquette guide.
