Without an iota of doubt, travel in and experiencing India for the first time is a whirlwind of all kinds of assault on the senses and mind-boggling cultural differences to digest. The food scene is renowned worldwide as one of the globes unmistakably most far-reaching foods. And people all around the world talk knowingly about Indian cuisine. But as a first-time traveller to this enormous subcontinent of a country, what are the truly essential, must-try foods in India?
India is a country that loves its food and prides itself on the hospitality of offering such a range of tastes at every turn.
Like much of Asia, Indian food is a vast constellation of culinary influences and traditions from every direction of the continent. It is vibrant and diverse, reflecting the country’s rich cultural and geographical diversity as an entirety.
Albeit Indian food and certainly a first-time trip to India does also come with that unjustly bestowed stigma of certain Delhi belly.
But we are here to squash that right off the bat. And instead, to get you excited before setting foot in this delicious subcontinent with a list of foods to try in India for your first time. And more importantly, why and where to find this deliciousness so that you don’t leave missing out on anything you shouldn’t.
Here are the absolute and unanimously decided foods to try in India for your first trip.
- Indian food
- Meat, plant-based or vegetarian?
- Foods to try in India
– Chai
– Aloo Paratha
– Murgh Makhani
– Rogan Josh
– Korma
– Butter Naan
– Dal Makhani
– Dal Tadka
– Masala Dosa
– Chole Bhature
– Lassi
– Gulab Jaman
– Jalebi
– Kulfi - The verdict?
About Indian food in India
Eating Indian food is like a high for your taste buds. India itself is an adventure but the food scene is one that takes adventure to a new high. Food in India is influenced by many of the surrounding Asian nations as well as by the diverse geography of the country itself.
There is fish and lighter, coconut inspired dishes in the south. And in the north, hearty flavours that are rich and vibrant like the desert states and mountain ranges.
First up a bit of disclosure, and to dispel a famous myth…
Indian food is not just about curry.
That is the myth, by the way. And yes, there are a lot of curries involved. But there is such a focus on curries at any mention of Indian food that often the other – and best parts – of Indian cuisine are ignored. Rather, it is a massive array of tastes, dishes, cuisines and foods that fittingly match the seriously massive subcontinent country.
And so, our recommended foods to try in India on your first time includes delicious drinks, sweets and desserts too. And all the tastes that will take you drooling across the subcontinent wanting more and more.
What are vegetarian and plant-based options like in India?
India is one of the best destinations on the planet for vegetarians and vegans. A huge proportion of India’s population is vegetarian or even pure-vegetarian. And so there are plenty of meat-free options available around the country.
We are not vegetarians and certainly not ones to shy from trying any new food around the world. But for the most part of our travels in India we stick to vegetarian dishes for the simple reason it reduces the risk of getting sick by taking one more factor (meat) out of the equation for travel.
Lentils, chickpeas, and paneer (cottage cheese) are common as vegetarian options. And some are must-try dishes for meat-eaters and plant-based travellers alike!
What are the most popular and ‘must-try’ foods to try in India on your first trip?
The country is unarguably diverse. And so, seemingly, is every list you turn to for foods to try in India.
But these favourites of ours (and soon to be yours) are the dishes and treats most recommend for a first time. They are foods that are easily recognisable and available pretty much anywhere you are traveling in India on your first time, and with a heads up on where we recommend the best place to safely and enjoyably find these foods to try in India.
- Read our complete travel guide to your first time in India with all of your questions answered about planning, booking, safety and travel in India.
1. Masala Chai
‘Tea’ is Chai in India. And certainly, the most famous tea in India is the rich and refreshing Masala Chai. It is a bit like a secret family recipe in India and you will find a variety of ways this tea tastes and is served. But for the most part, Masala Chai is a milky Indian tea which is flavoured with sugar and spice.
If you aren’t used to drinking herbal teas or sweetened tea or even tea with milk, hear me out. The entire practice of drinking Masala Chai in India is far more than just being time for tea.
In India, offering Chai is a real gesture of hospitality and a genuine taste of Indian culture. Whether you are offered Chai while you are shopping or hear the call of the Chai Wala on board India Railways somewhere across the subcontinent, it is the most refreshing taste of sweet aromatic goodness that far outweighs any preconceptions of sugar, spices or tea!
And by the way, you might hear foreigners recommending you try ‘Chai Tea’ on your travels. But this is the first faux pas! Chai literally means ‘tea’. So, unless you are wanting to order ‘Tea Tea’, the first thing is to confidently accept or order ‘Chai’ or Masala Chai.
- Where to find it? Masala Chai is a highlight all over the country! But if you make it to Jaisalmer, our favourite chai wala in all of India is the busy Prabhu Tea Stall in Ghandi Chowk, Jaisalmer.
2. Paratha – Foods to try in India
Paratha is a flaky, layered, golden-brown Indian flatbread. It is made using unleavened dough from a whole wheat flour and is panfried on a hotplate with butter or Ghee (clarified butter).
I’d say Paratha is officially my favourite type of bread in India. Though I would add to that, that when it comes to travel and bread, it is hard to choose favourites. Paratha is a fried bread (as opposed to the more famously known Naan, which is made with yeast and is traditionally baked in a tandoor oven).
And fried and bread just goes together so well.
In New Zealand we don’t typically hear of Paratha often. It’s usually overshadowed by Naan. But Paratha deserves more. It is the type of leavened heaven that is served hot and fresh, and wherever you are heading in the subcontinent, it needs to be tried in India.
- Where to find it? We found the best Paratha at Kale Da Dhabar in Amritsar, Punjab.
3. Aloo Paratha
This is one of the foods to try in India that you likely will come across at breakfast time. Often, breakfast is included with your accommodation in India. And unless it’s a full spread buffet it’s also justifiably tempting to opt for an egg and toast or something (safely) simple like toast and jam. But where is the fun in that, right?!
Breakfast is a good place to start with something simple. And the infamous Aloo Paratha might just be your new thing…
Aloo Paratha is a paratha stuffed with potato filling that India proudly boasts as native to the Indian subcontinent. It is delicious as breakfast and is most often served with a small bowl of curd and a serving of pickle (my favourite).
- Where to find it: The team at Wanderlust Guesthouse in Jaisalmer do an awesome Aloo Paratha for breakfast.
4. Butter Naan – Foods to try in India
Butter Naan is found on the menus of almost every eatery in India, from street vendors to high-end restaurants. But for travellers arriving in India its easy to confuse all the types of Indian flatbreads and assume they are the same.
Where Chapati is cooked on a hot plate and is a simpler, unleavened bread. Naan bread is leavened with yeast and the dough is cooked in a tandoor or oven, making for a soft, fluffy and chewy texture. And as not every household has access to an oven, Naan bread is a popular street food or in restaurants and eateries.
Butter Naan gets its rich, buttery taste from the generous amount of Ghee (clarified butter) that is brushed on top of the bread before it’s cooked.
In the west we don’t often cook with Ghee, and instead substitute it for butter. But Ghee is the real deal and is the secret to the soft, buttery goodness of a truly authentic Indian Butter Naan.
- Where to find it? Order Butter Naan from any restaurant menu or try it hot and fresh from a tandoor bakery.
5. Dal Tadka / Yellow Dal
Dal Tadka is a simple and soupy yellow lentil dish, generally served with rice. The literal translation of dal tadka is ‘lentil tempering’. The lentils are tempered with spices and herbs and served in a simple dish that is packed with protein.
This is a staple dish all over South Asia. It really is the cheapest and easiest form of protein to cook and so it isn’t surprising that this is a staple. India is the largest producer of pulses in the world.
As a traveller, and first timer in India, Dal Tadka is a good place to start. It is a simple type of curry and is served with plain rice and flatbread. There isn’t a lot that can go wrong in ordering Dal and so it’s a great starting point for curries to try. Plus, its cheap, easy to pronounce and found everywhere.
And if you are looking for foods to try in India that aren’t spicy, you can ask for a non-spicy Dal or ‘Baby Dal’. For kids (and foreigners) there is usually the option for Dal to be un-spiced.
- Where to find it? Dal can be found on almost every menu and is commonly one part of Thali and served on trains in India.
6. Dal Makhani – Black Dal
Dal Makhani is like the creamier, richer version of Dal Tadka (above). It is a popular North Indian dish where whole black lentils are slow cooked with spices, butter and cream.
This is another goodie as far as foods to try in India on your first time as it is a gentle type of curry and likely more creamy than spicy.
- Where to find it? We recommend the delicious Dal Makhani at Ambrai Restaurant in Udaipur and on your first night staying near Delhi airport at Hotel Taurus Sarovar Portico.
7. Lassi
Lassi is a traditional yoghurt-based drink that is hugely popular in South Asia and the Indian subcontinent. It’s a bit like a milkshake and deliciously refreshing. It is cold drink and deliciously refreshing, and even more so when served in single use clay cups which keep it lovely and cool!
- Where to find it: We recommend EVERYONE traveling in Rajasthan try the old, famous Lassi wallah in Jaipur at Shop 312 on MI Road. If you are nervous about trying street food this is a great place to start.
8. Kulfi – Dessert foods to try in India
Kulfi is sometimes called traditional Indian ice cream. It is a frozen dairy dessert that comes in a variety of flavours and is frozen into an ice-block shaped desert on a stick. (Hence, it’s pretty much an ice cream!).
I didn’t gravitate towards Kulfi on first trips to India (and regret that immensely). But I thought Kulfi was a dairy-free dessert of some type. Which it’s not, by the way. The only and biggest difference between Kulfi and traditional ice cream is that Kulfi is not churned while its frozen, and so it results in a denser final product.
So, density aside, it is a lot like ice cream. And it’s delicious! Write that down too, because Kulfi is right up there as another essential on that list of foods to try in India on a first trip!
- Where to find it? We love the Kulfi at Kaleva’s Crème N Crisp in Connaught Place in Delhi. This is an entire Kulfi shop and for just a 100 INR ($1 USD) you can choose Kulfi from a huge selection! Otherwise, there is a small shop in the ever-busy Chandni Chowk called Kanwarji Raj Kumar halfway down past the Gurudwara.
9. Chole Bhature
Chole Bhature is a combination meal often eaten as a breakfast dish. It includes a spicy Chana (chickpeas) dish served with a puffy Indian fried bread called a Bhatura. Fried bread is always delicious, right? And pairing it with an easy to eat chickpea sauce is a match made right too.
As a vegetarian dish and including a fried bread, this one ticks all the boxes that if served hot and fresh it is a great choice of low-risk street foods to try in India.
- Where to find it? One of our favourite finds in Chandni Chowk, old Delhi is a popular narrow food street specialising in Chole Bhature and Paranthe (paratha) for less than $1 USD. That, and the adventure – and success – of finding this raved about small hole-in-the-wall street food stall is worth it! Otherwise Chole Bhature is safely recommend at your hotel breakfast buffet.
10. Murgh Makhani / Butter Chicken – Foods to try in India
It’s pretty fair game to conclude that on every travellers’ first thought of foods to try in India, curries come to mind. And especially, the ever-famous Butter Chicken that is synonymous with Indian cuisine anywhere else in the world.
But did you know Butter Chicken, or as it’s known in India, Murgh Makhani, is not really much like the version we find in the west?
Butter Chicken in India is much more flavourful. It’s not sweet like we are sometimes disappointed with when ordering Butter Chicken in New Zealand. In India it is a perfectly delicious example of the richness found in – proper – Northern Indian cuisine.
The chicken is marinated for several hours with lemon, spices and yoghurt, then cooked and served in a curry sauce enriched with butter.
And yup, it is every bit as good as it sounds.
Despite more than six visits in the last few years, it’s not often we feel confident to order meat, or especially chicken, while traveling in India. There is no denying that chicken can be risky business for travellers. And in a lot of India the options are vegetarian anyway.
But if you are a meat eater and want and Indian food to try in India that you can really go home and rave about, Butter Chicken is one that is straight out much better in-country.
- Where to find it? We recommend Butter Chicken at Wanderlust Guesthouse in Jaisalmer or at the Punjab Province restaurant at the Hyatt Regency in Amritsar.
11. Rogan Josh
Rogan Josh is a type of curry originating from Kashmir. It is traditionally a lamb curry with a piquant combination of intense spices in a creamy tomato curry sauce. The lamb is slow-cooked and fall apart tender and packs a serious flavour punch!
- Where to find it? We look forward to Rogan Josh every time we arrive in India and check in to the airport hotel and restaurant at Hotel Taurus Sarovar Portico in Delhi and at Lazeez Affaire in Connaught Place.
12. Thali – Foods to try in India
Thali refers more to a style of eating than a particular Indian food, and it warrants an important place on any first timers’ dishes to seek.
A Thali is a round platter used to serve food in India, as well as the name for a meal made up of a variety of dishes served together. The idea behind a Thali is to present all the different flavours together on one plate: sweet, salty, bitter, sour and spicy. Because according to Indian food customs, a meal should balance all flavours.
Ordering a Thali is ideal for anyone overwhelmed by making food choices on a menu (me, fullstop) and especially with a menu that doesn’t feature much that’s recognisably titled. Plus, it is a great way to sample a few new foods to try in India all on one plate.
A Thali can be vegetarian or non-vegetarian. And typically includes rice, dal, vegetables, roti, yoghurt, chutney or pickles, and something sweet to finish, like Gulab Jaman.
- Where to find it: We recommend the Thali at Exotic in Main Bazar or at Kaleva family restaurant in Connaught Place. Often the dinners and lunches served on the trains in India are a type of Thali. If you are feeling nervous about which foods to eat on board, a Thali is a good option, and you can just try the Dal, rice and roti if unsure.
13. Gulab Jamun – Dessert foods to try in India
Gulab Jamun is a classic Indian sweet dessert made with milk solids, sugar, rose water and cardamom powder. I would say it is the most famous Indian dessert and the chances are if you have ordered a Thali, it might come with a dessert ball of Gulab Jamun.
We all vote the name sounds unflattering and certainly unfitting for such a delicious dessert. (It sounds a bit like ‘glob’ or ‘gloop’ which it absolutely isn’t!). But names aside this Indian dessert is one of the foods to try in India that deserves to be sought out if not served somewhere in the first few days.
Sometimes Gulab Jamun is served warm as a single, hot ball of sweet-cake goodness for dessert. And admittedly it can look stingy as only one ball served on a desert bowl of some sort. But trust us on this one. It’s sweet and sticky, and if it’s a good one, then one is a great dessert serving of Gulab Jamun.
- Where to find it? We love the delicious Gulab Jamun served after dinner at Jaipur Haveli in Rajasthan.
14. Jalebi – Sweet foods to try in India
Jalebi, like Gulab Jaman, is a popular sweet snack that is ubiquitous in India. It is found all over South Asia and West Asia as well as in some parts of Africa.
And as far as foods to try in India for your first time, this one is a goodie. Jalebi is a treat made by piping spirals of slightly fermented batter into hot oil, and then soaking the whorls in warm sugar syrup.
It’s seriously sweet. But because it’s a deliciously deep-fried sweet treat, it’s served hot and fresh out of the oil. And, forgiving any caloric qualms about fried food, it’s one to eat thankfully hot, fresh and fried to germ-killing temperatures.
- Where to find it? We rate the famous Old Jalebi Wala in Chandni Chowk, Delhi that has been operating since 1884. Or the similarly long-standing Ram Das Jalebiwala in Amritsar, Punjab.
15. Korma
Korma has its roots in the Mughlai cuisine of the Indian subcontinent and can be traced back to the 16thcentury. And something that’s lasted that long has got to be good, right?
It is a curry dish but Korma is revered as the gentlest and mildest of Indian curries.
It can be made with either meat or vegetables braised in a relatively mild velvety yogurt sauce that’s seasoned with spices. However, Korma is not a typically spicy dish.
- Where to find it? Oscar is our biggest Korma fan and recommends the vegetable Korma at Wanderlust Guesthouse in Jaisalmer or at Lazeez Affaire in Connaught Place, Delhi.
16. Masala Dosa
At risk of going beyond the promised 15 foods to try in India, we had to add Masala Dosa as one more to look out for. Dosa is a light, South Indian dish made from rice flour. (South Indian cuisine is typically lighter than the northern style of cooking).
It is like a huge, light crispy pancake and comes filled with an aromatic potato curry. It is popular as a light, vegetarian breakfast or lunch served along with dal (lentil curry) and an array of southern Indian chutneys.
- Where to find it? Try Saravanaa Bhavan in Connaught Place, Delhi for an amazing South Indian dining experience. But note, on a weekend queues are out the door. This is one of India’s most popular international restaurants!
The verdict? What are the truly must-try foods to try in India?
It’s hard to narrow it down to a short list of foods to try in India on your first time. Indian cuisine carries so many different influences from the East and the West as well as a range of religious beliefs and practices, making it truly diverse, distinctive, and exciting.
Our biggest advice? Don’t be shy and don’t miss out on what is recommended or popular with the locals. It’s popular for a reason!
So, happy travelling and happy dining in India. And let us know any other treasures and tastes you reckon deserve a place on this list of must-eat foods to try in India!
More about travel planning for India and beyond…
These are the companies we use while traveling fulltime as a family and that we would recommend to anyone planning and booking travel.
- Booking.com – The best all-around accommodation booking site that constantly provides the cheapest and lowest rates. They have the widest selection of budget accommodation and it’s easy to filter and sort into price and availability with all the extras you are looking for personally.
- Skyscanner– This is by far our favourite flight search engine. They are able to search small websites and budget airlines that larger search sites often miss. We book all our flights through Skyscanner.
- GetYourGuide– Get Your Guide is a huge online marketplace for tours and excursions offered all around the world including everything from walking tours, to street-food tours, cooking classes, desert safari’s and more!
- SafetyWing – A global travel insurance that covers people from all over the world while outside their home country. You can buy it short or longterm; and even if you are out of the country.
- World Nomads – Travel insurance tailored for longterm travel and nomads (including those who have already left home). Make sure you have travel insurance before traveling in India!
Read more from travel in South Asia
- How to use a squat toilet: Everything you didn’t want to ask…
- Our complete packing list for travel in India.
- Taking an overnight train in Pakistan.
- How to apply for a Pakistan e-Visa: And can you use it at the Wagah Border?
- Crossing the Wagah Border from India to Pakistan.
- Pakistan with kids: A complete guide to travel in Pakistan.
- Using ATM’s, withdrawing and carrying your money safely in India.
