Rajasthani meals that perfectly complemented my Chittorgarh visit

5 Views

Chittorgarh is not a city people visit for food. They come for the fort, one of the largest in India, spread across a plateau that rises dramatically above the plains and holds within it a concentration of temples, towers, and palace ruins that takes most of a day to cover properly. The food, when it comes up at all in conversations about Chittorgarh, tends to be an afterthought. A meal between the Vijay Stambha and the Rana Kumbha Palace, or a quick dinner before an early night ahead of the fort climb.

I’d approached it the same way on my first visit. On the second, I paid more attention, and what I found was a food culture rooted in the same Rajput history that built the fort above the city, practical, robust, and considerably more interesting than its low profile suggests.

The dal baati churma that set the tone in Chittorgarh

I arrived on a Tuesday afternoon and went looking for something to eat within an hour of checking in, having skipped lunch on the train. A small restaurant near the main market was advertising dal baati churma on a handwritten board outside, and the smell coming through the open door decided for me before I’d finished reading.

Dal baati churma is Rajasthan’s most representative dish, and Chittorgarh’s version has a specific character shaped by the local firewood used to bake the baatis, the hard wheat dumplings that are the centrepiece of the preparation. The exterior here was harder and more charred than versions I’d had in Jaipur or Udaipur, which initially seemed like it might be a problem and turned out to be the point.

The contrast between the charred outside and the soft, ghee-soaked interior was more pronounced, and dunking the broken baati into the five-dal mixture that came alongside produced a combination that justified the entire detour to this particular restaurant.

The Chittorgarh Fort visit and what came before and after it

I spent the following day at Chittorgarh Fort, arriving at 8 am and leaving in the late afternoon with the particular tiredness that comes from covering a large historical site on foot in increasing heat. The fort is extraordinary and physically demanding, and the meals that bracketed it mattered more than they would have on a less exhausting day.

Breakfast before the climb was at a dhaba near the fort’s main gate, where a plate of pyaaz kachori with thin imli chutney arrived quickly enough to suggest the kitchen had been making the same thing since before sunrise. The kachori here had a filling that was more finely spiced than the version from the previous evening’s restaurant, and the onion inside had been cooked down enough that it was barely identifiable as onion, which is the correct approach.

The morning market and a sweet discovery in Chittorgarh

On the third morning, with no particular plan beyond a slow start before the afternoon train, I walked through the market area near the old city without any food agenda. A sweet shop near the vegetable market was doing a steady trade in mawa kachori, a sweet variation of the savoury preparation I’d been eating since arriving, filled with a rich khoya and dry fruit mixture and fried to a deeper colour than the savoury version.

I’d heard of mawa kachori before but never tried it. The filling was dense and intensely sweet in a way that the fried exterior balanced rather than amplified, and the whole dish was warm enough from the oil for a satisfying experience.

Wrapping up

Staying centrally made this food exploration considerably easier to manage. Several hotels in Chittorgarh sit within walking distance of both the main market area and the approach road to the fort, which meant moving between meals and monuments required no planning beyond deciding which direction to walk in.