Best Food Tour in Jaipur

Eat like a local, run by people who have done this since 2014

Two hours, on foot, with a guide whose job is to take you to the stalls and shops that Jaipur itself uses rather than the ones with English signage.

What Rajasthani food actually is

The desert shaped it. Water was scarce, so things were cooked in ghee, milk and buttermilk rather than water. Fresh vegetables were scarce, so gram flour, lentils and dried desert beans carried the plate. There was no refrigeration, so much of the food is dry-spiced and keeps for days.

Once somebody tells you that while you are eating it, the whole cuisine makes sense.

What you will eat

Pyaaz kachori, the onion-stuffed fried pastry that Jaipur does better than anywhere, at a shop that has been frying since the 1950s and still queues out the door.

Mirchi vada — a whole green chilli, stuffed with spiced potato, battered and fried. Less fierce than it sounds and utterly addictive.

Dal baati churma if the tour includes a sit-down: hard wheat rolls baked until they crack, broken into ghee, with a spiced dal and a sweet crumbled churma alongside.

Ghewar in season, a disc of soaked honeycombed batter that belongs to the monsoon festivals. Lassi in a clay kulhad. Mawa kachori if you have room, which you will not.

And the sweet shops of Johari Bazaar, where LMB has been selling since 1727 in one form or another.

Two options

The standard tour, or a morning-and-evening version — mornings are for kachori and breakfast food, evenings for chaat and sweets.

Practical

Two hours, on foot.

Vegetarian throughout, which Rajasthani street food largely is. Say in advance about chilli tolerance, Jain requirements or allergies.

Come hungry, and do not eat beforehand — people consistently underestimate how much food two hours contains.