Our Trips - Special Interest Tours - Gourmet Cuisine

Indian cuisine, reflecting the diverse ethnic, cultural and regional difference of this vast subcontinent, offers the visitor a bewildering variety of food options. Cuisines differ considerably from region to region, where the geographical and climatic factors also dictate food habits. Northern India, where extended Muslim and Mughal rule influenced the cuisine of these areas, more meat is cooked and the food is similar to that of the middle East and Central Asia. In south India and Eastern India, being coastal areas emphasis is more on marine and river products and on vegetarian fare.

However is it difficult to define as the metros are getting more and more cosmopolitan, increasing the outlets of multi- Indian cuisine. Cereal is the basis of all Indian food – wheat is more commonly consumed in North, Rajasthan, Central India, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Rice is an essential commodity in the coastal regions of South India, Orissa, Bengal and North East.

Some of the famous cuisines originated in the great royal courts of the famous Mughals and their descendents, the Nawabs and Nizams. With India producing a great variety of spices, all Indian cuisines use freshly grounded spices. Cardamom, pepper, cinnamon, turmeric, red chili, saffron, coriander, fenugreek and asofoetida, added with garlic, ginger and onion.

Ancient treaties prescribed spices and types of food as being necessary to digestion and health. The time of the year and the classification of food as “heating” and “cooling”, were considerations in the kind of food consumed, in any particular season

Tandoor – the origin of the tandoor (clay oven) was a major contribution. Varieties of delectable Kebabs – seek, boti, reshmi and barra kebabs, tandoori chicken and a range of baked breads – naan, roti, are all part of this royal heritage.

The Dum Pukth cuisine of the Avadh region (Lucknow) is noted for its delicately flavoured food.

Hyderabadi biryani and pulavs are richly cooked spicy mutton with rice, flavoured with saffron, are a universal favourite.

Kashmir Wazwan is an entire banquet. A variety of meat dishes, each slowly cooked in its own special mix of spices - rogan josh, gustaba, ikhni, rista, korma, chaap, each dish has a different flavour and sauce to taste.


Goa, Kerala, Bengal, Orissa use a variety of fresh water fish and sea fish, crab, prawns, lobsters. With 400 years of Portuguese rule Goan cuisine has pork dishes like vindaloo, sorpotel, spicy sausage cooked in vinegar base. Bengal uses a lot of mustard flavour, and the use of coconut in Kerala curries.


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