Will I leave hungry? Portions on a tasting menu
How nine small courses add up over three hours, and what to tell us if you have a large or small appetite.
A morning in Jaipur’s markets with our kitchen
Where our cooks buy chillies, millets, brass and vegetables in the walled city, and how to visit the same markets yourself.
Twice a week, before the city warms up, two of our cooks take the van into the walled city to buy what does not come from our farms. If you are in Jaipur for a few days, the same route makes a good morning, and it shows you where many of our ingredients begin.
Start early at the Muhana mandi on the southern edge of the city, or at the sabzi market near Chandpole for smaller quantities. By 7 am, carts of seasonal vegetables are being unloaded: kachri and tinda in the monsoon, fresh green chickpeas and sarson in winter. This is where we buy what the farms cannot supply in time.
Next, enter the walled city and walk the spice lanes near Tripolia Bazaar. Look for sacks of dried ker and sangri, whole mathania chillies hung in long strings, amchur, kachri powder and the coarse local jaggery. Shopkeepers will let you smell before you buy.
From there, Kishanpole Bazaar and the lanes around it have shops for brass and copper utensils, and wooden tools for the kitchen. Our dal baati is baked in brass handis from a shop here that has supplied us since we opened. Finish with breakfast in the old city: hot kachori and a glass of thick lassi from one of the stalls near the Hawa Mahal end of the bazaar. Most shops open around 10 am, so the spice lanes are busiest between 10.30 and 1. Wear comfortable shoes and carry cash for small purchases.
