Where to eat in Delhi
3 h route4 stopsBest: Eat where there’s a local queue and turnover. That’s the ruleUpdated July 2026
Butter chicken, the best-known Indian dish on the planet, was invented in Delhi and is under eighty years old. It was made by cooks who had arrived fleeing Peshawar after the 1947 Partition, who set up a restaurant here and who one day, to use up the tandoori chicken that dried out overnight, put it into a sauce of tomato, butter and cream. Dal makhani came out of the same kitchen. What the whole world calls Indian food is, in good part, an invention of Delhi refugees in the fifties.
That story is the best introduction to eating here, because it dismantles the idea that this is an ancient unchanging cuisine. Delhi’s food is Mughal, Punjabi, street and fairly recent in many cases, and it changes by neighbourhood. And it comes with a legitimate worry worth addressing head-on and without drama: yes, you can eat street food in Delhi, and there are concrete rules for doing it well.
The route, stop by stop
4 STOPS- 01
Street food, with rules
Let’s take what everyone asks. You can eat street food in Delhi, and it would be a shame not to, because the best of it is there. The rules are three and they’re common sense: there should be a queue of locals, because that means turnover and nothing has been sitting for hours, it should be made in front of you and with fire, because heat solves nearly everything, and avoid anything with water or ice of unknown origin, and pre-peeled fruit.
With those filters, the catalogue opens. Chaat is the ruling category: cold crunchy mixtures of potato, chickpea, yoghurt, chutneys and spice, sweet-sour and hot at once. Golgappa are hollow crisp spheres filled with spiced water that you eat in one bite, whole, because if you bite them they collapse on you. The stall hands them over one at a time and you keep going until you say stop. It’s the most fun thing you can eat in this city.
And an honest warning: if your stomach isn’t used to it, start with the fried things and work up. And drink only bottled water, always, including for brushing your teeth.
- 02
The Mughal food of Old Delhi
In the lanes around the Jama Masjid, Shah Jahan’s great mosque, is Delhi’s Mughal cooking: minced meat kebabs grilled over coals, dark dense curries cooked for hours, biryani, and breads that come out of the clay oven stuck to its wall. It’s empire food, rich, spiced and fatty, which came from Persia and central Asia and acclimatised here four hundred years ago.
The area is a labyrinth and the way to do it is without a map: go to the mosque, leave by the south gate and head into the lanes following the smoke. Eat with your right hand, the left isn’t used for eating, using the bread as a spoon, which is how it’s done and how it tastes best.
And a calendar warning that saves disappointment: during Ramadan, this area at night is an extraordinary food festival after sunset, but during the day many places are shut or empty. Check the dates.
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The Punjabi invention
If you’ve eaten in an Indian restaurant in any city in the world, you’ve eaten the cooking invented in Delhi after 1947. With Partition, hundreds of thousands of Punjabi refugees arrived in this city, many from Peshawar and Lahore, and among them came cooks. They set up restaurants, brought the tandoor oven and adapted their dishes to local tastes and ingredients.
Out of that kitchen came, within a few years, tandoori chicken as we know it, butter chicken and dal makhani, those creamy black lentils cooked overnight.
They’re dishes under eighty years old that today represent an entire country of a billion people and that nobody eats in southern India.
It’s worth knowing for two reasons: because it dismantles the cliché of the millennia-old cuisine, and because it explains why the Indian food you’ve had abroad resembles Delhi’s so closely and the rest of the country’s so little.
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Tea, and how to order it
Let’s start with the obvious, which surprises plenty of people: chai means tea. So ordering a “chai tea” is ordering a “tea tea”, and in Delhi what you ask for is chai, plainly. It’s black tea boiled (boiled, not steeped) with milk, sugar and spices, in a small glass, and it’s drunk on the street at any hour of the day, at stalls that are no more than a burner and a bench.
That chai stall is a social institution: people stop, drink the glass standing in two minutes and move on. It costs next to nothing and it’s the best way to take a pause in a Delhi day.
A nice detail that’s disappearing: in some places it’s still served in a small unglazed clay cup, called a kulhad, which you throw on the ground when you finish because it goes back to being earth. Tea tastes different from clay. And if you don’t want the spices, ask for chai without masala, which is also normal.
Frequently asked
Can you eat street food in Delhi?
Yes, and the best of it is there. Three rules: there should be a queue of locals (that means turnover and nothing sitting for hours), it should be made in front of you with fire, and avoid water and ice of unknown origin and pre-peeled fruit. Drink only bottled water, including for brushing your teeth. If your stomach isn’t used to it, start with the fried things.
Where was butter chicken invented?
In Delhi, under eighty years ago. It was made by cooks who arrived from Peshawar as refugees after the 1947 Partition, who to use up tandoori chicken that was drying out put it into a sauce of tomato, butter and cream. Dal makhani came from the same kitchen. What the world calls Indian food is largely an invention of Delhi refugees in the fifties.