Experiences at Kasauli : Part 3 (Food!!!)

Now comes the most interesting part, isn't it ;) Hehehe... 

Well, i want to be honest and frank here that Kasauli is not a food-place but every hill station adds their own taste to the even-so-common dishes! Guess as they say, the ingredients, climate, water everything adds to the taste of food and it hence differs from place to place.

The chana chaat

So a normal chana daal chaat with just onions, green chillies, chaat masala and lime juice would also taste so flavourful that you wouldn't want to stop at one serving! 

Street food is what i love to gorge on when on a trip keeping all the hygiene issues at bay! And kasauli gave a lot of food sights for the same. Everywhere on the highway, we could see "thelas" of Chole-kulche on the way from Kalka railway station to Dharmpur (a centre hub for buses and taxis). 

A typical thela(cart) selling Chole-Kulche

There were also the famous "Meat-chawal" dhabas, selling meat gravy with rice. Hubby wanted to try it, but everytime we crossed passed any dhaba, we had already finished our meal :) 

A Meat-chawal dhaba popular in hills

We mostly dined at the awesome Rooftop restaurant in our Hotel-Hangout... But when we went for a walk during the day, we didn't miss eating the much-recommended Burger on the show HOMP (Highway on my plate, which comes on television, which we used to follow regularly until now) from the shop Better Deals right before the Christ Church on the mall road. When i spoke to the owner, he mentioned that this is the 5th generation since the shop has started and is running successfully due to their natural homemade stuff like chutneys and pickles. Reminiscing the past, he mentioned that those good old days were great as compared to the tourism now, since he felt things are getting commercialized now.

The paneer and chicken burger...Yumm is the word!

Up north, indianised sandwiches (with heaps of mayonnaise ;)) are quite popular. So, to say, they add stuffing/filling in between the breads and serve (and it does taste awesome!). So when we went to the Heritage market, we tried the spicy bun samosa from Narinder sweet house. Their gulab jamuns and jalebis are also famous, but we didn't have a sweet craving that time, hence gave it a skip. Everything at his shop looked so delicious...

Narinder sweet house at Heritagemarket

The Bun-samosa

And while strolling down the mall road, we also tasted momos, that the place is famous for, due to a lot of Tibetan population residing there. Couldn't click pictures as it was already dark and was a small little stall. Then we met a very interesting local old man who runs a small tea shop. He had stories to tell about his good old days, and we sat listening to them all over a cup of a nice strong aromatic coffee he made for us. 

We also dropped in at the very famous "Giani da dhaba", and felt guilty for not listening to one of the friends to avoid it. This was one of our wishlist places and with high hopes, we wanted to eat there just to put a tickmark on our "Been there, done that" places, but the food was quite dissapointing and the service pathetic (too rude i must say). There is just nothing to write about the kadhai chicken and paneer that we ordered. 

We also tried their famous local fruit beer - Apple beer which was too sweet for our taste. 

Himachal Pradesh has booming fruit wine industry and the excise laws there are very liberal as compared to other states in India. Retaining the original fruit flavours, there were almost 14 different types of wines apart from the regular red wine. These wines have to be consumed young, as thy don't age as grape wine. The Cherry wine makes for a perfect desert wine, the Rhodo wine is made of a local flower considered good for heart. We loved the Peach and plum wine too which we got a bottle of each back home! 

And how can we not come back home with a bag of goodies... I always love to carry some local food back home! So, as the place was known for, we got some herbal green teas, some homemade chutneys and pickles (which are very unique and tasty), and some bottles of wine! :)

And so, a wonderful trip ended ! Cookininpajamas team definitely wants to visit this place again :)

Hope you all enjoyed reading my 3 part-kasauli trip!