14-Day India
Itinerary

Butter Chicken

Delhi's most globally replicated dish, invented at the Moti Mahal restaurant in 1948 — leftover tandoor-cooked chicken simmered in a tomato-cream-butter sauce perfumed with cardamom, fenugreek, ginger and a touch of dried fenugreek leaves (kasuri methi); the silk of the sauce, the smoke of the chicken and the richness of the butter create one of the most seductive flavour combinations ever achieved.

Biryani

India's most contested dish — in Hyderabad, long-grain basmati rice is layered with marinated meat (the dum pukht method seals the pot with dough and slow-cooks over charcoal) creating a rice that is simultaneously steamed by the meat's vapour and perfumed with saffron, rose water and whole spices; Hyderabad's version uses raw marinated meat; Lucknow's uses pre-cooked.

Vada Pav

Mumbai's definitive street food — a deep-fried spiced potato ball (vada) in a soft white bread roll (pav) with three chutneys: a dry garlic chutney, a green coriander-mint sauce, and a tamarind-date paste; invented at Dadar station in 1966; 10 million consumed daily across Maharashtra; the working-class meal that defines the city's food identity.

Rogan Josh

Kashmir's great lamb curry — pieces of bone-in lamb slow-cooked in yoghurt, Kashmiri red chillies (for colour, not heat), fennel, cardamom and the dried flowers of cockscomb until the sauce reduces to a brick-red, aromatic gravy of extraordinary depth; no onion, no garlic; part of the 36-dish Wazwan feast tradition.

Kati Roll

Kolkata's greatest street invention — a paratha (flaky flatbread) cooked on a tawa with egg, filled with skewered and charcoal-grilled chicken, lamb or paneer, sliced onion, green chilli and lime, rolled tightly in paper; invented at Nizam's restaurant on New Market in 1932; now replicated in every Indian city but never equalled outside Kolkata.

Dal Makhani

Delhi's richest lentil dish — whole black lentils (urad dal) and kidney beans soaked overnight and slow-cooked on a tawa-sealed pot for up to 24 hours with tomato, ginger, garlic and extraordinary quantities of butter and cream until the lentils break down into a glossy, deep-black, silky dal of astonishing richness; the Bukhara restaurant's 32-year-old dal never fully empties.

Masala Dosa

South India's greatest breakfast export — a fermented rice and lentil batter poured onto a black iron griddle and spread in concentric circles until paper-thin; filled with a spiced potato masala and folded into a golden, shatteringly crisp cone over a metre long; served with coconut chutney and sambar; MTR in Bengaluru and Saravana Bhavan set the global standard.