Flavours of Jaipur ft. Hyundai i20 N Line - Food Trails

Journeys fusing our love for road trips and food continue as the second part of the Food Trails series takes us to Jaipur with the Hyundai i20 N Line for authentic Rajasthani food and more.

The depth of India’s diversity is all-encompassing, with every region showcasing its own unique identity in terms of people, language, landscape, art, culture and, of course, food. The combination of our love for food and road trips has us journeying to different parts of the country to sample not just local cuisine, but popular outlets as well that should be on every foodie’s to-do list.

For the first part of the Food Trails series, we drove east from Delhi in the Hyundai Alcazar to Lucknow to dig into some lip-smacking Awadhi cuisine and for the second part, we headed in the opposite direction into Rajasthan with the exciting Hyundai i20 N Line in search of good food.

The roughly 260km long stretch connecting New Delhi with Jaipur is one we’re all too familiar with and is generally quite a busy highway with heavy commercial vehicle traffic. As much as we love road trips, this one, in particular, wouldn’t ordinarily be classified as exciting, but the i20 N Line helped keep the thrill alive with its precise steering, powerful turbocharged petrol motor and slick-shifting DCT.

The five-hour drive to Jaipur worked up quite an appetite and while our eyes feasted upon the grandeur of Amer Fort and the elegance of Jal Mahal, food is what the body demanded as we made our way through the city’s busy streets towards Sri Moturam Prasadam in Ashok Nagar for authentic Rajasthani food. Although this particular restaurant has been around for only five years, Ajit Sharma and his brother Abhishek Sharma, a multi-award-winning chef consultant with extensive experience in the F&B business, have been serving delectable food for over 13 years.

The restaurant’s USP is thalis ranging from ones with traditional Rajasthani dishes to North Indian favourites as well as South Indian cuisine with sizes ranging from a meal for one to massive thalis that can feed entire households. We picked the Marwari thali or Marwari Bhog as it’s listed on the menu, for lunch, which comprises traditional Rajasthani dishes including kair sangri, gatta masala, dana methi and kadhi along with aloo pyaz, paneer subzi and dal tadka served with tawa rotis and missi rotis, papad served with boondi raita, masala chaach and pickles.

Aesthetically pleasing and exceptionally tasty, the thali certainly hit the spot and is a great option for anyone looking to try out traditional Rajasthani dishes. This particular cuisine tends to be a little on the spicy side so tread carefully if your spice tolerance is lower than most. It is tough to pick a favourite, but if we absolutely had to, we’d probably go with the gatta masala as the pick of the lot. Of course, culinary preferences are highly subjective so, individual choices are likely to vary. Also, in the interest of avoiding food wastage, we’d recommend sharing the thali since there’s plenty on the plate for one person to polish off alone. Besides thalis, there’s a fairly extensive menu of dishes to choose from across multiple cuisines, including authentic Rajasthani delicacies as well as popular North and South Indian offerings.

If you have a sweet tooth, Jaipur and in fact, Rajasthan in general prides itself in serving up a wide variety of sweets with perhaps ghevar being the state’s most popular contribution. Although thanks to its popularity it is now available all year round, the mithai has traditionally been seasonal, restricted to Sawan months or the July-August period. Our exploration of the busy streets of old Jaipur led us past Hawa Mahal to Shri Mathura Pavitra Misthan Bhandar in Kishanpole Bazar. Their claim to fame is spongy soft rasgullas dipped in watery syrup topped off with rose water.