A Foodie’s Guide To Darjeeling

2015 was a crazy busy year for me and the husband. While we travelled a fair bit, we realised by the end of the year that we have not travelled together once in the year. We took a few days break in the lap of Himalaya in Darjeeling. While I don’t think there is anything left written about the so-called Queen of the hills, let me take you through a guided gastronomic tour through the beautiful town.

Breakefast at Sonam’s Kitchen:

This is a typical hole in the wall food joint but once you taste their food, you will bless me from the bottom of your heart. If you take the left lane from the mall in front of the stable and walk uphill for around 5 minutes you will reach this place. They have two restaurants facing each other serving the same food, but we went to the old one always.

We were greeted by very friendly staff, who not only served the food with warm smile but gave us tips about other eating out options as well. They were the nicest staffs I have met in any Darjeeling restaurants.

Coming to the food, if you love dark full of aroma coffee, this is the place for you. The menu described the coffee as  ‘Coffee, The Real Thing’ and it was exactly like that. But we are a bunch of bongs with a serious case of sweet tooth, so we went gaga over the hot chocolate. For breakfast we ordered a set breakfast of hash brown, fried egg and fried tomato. They prepared them from the scratch and delicious would be the understatement of the century. It must be hands down the best hash brown we ever tasted.

The other food we had was pancake with banana and chocolate which was also yum.

Next time you visit Darjeeling choose this place for breakfast, you will not regret .

Kunga:

I am sure all traveloholics know about this place already but let me repeat , this place serves the best Tibetan food in Darjeeling and most probably the best food as well. When we reached Darjeeling it was almost zero degree temperature , we were starving and shivering. Went to Kunga and ordered two bowl of Thupka and it instantly warmed us. We had chicken gayathuk soup, which is a normal thupka with egg nd chicken and loads of vegetables and also chicken bhagthuk soup, which had round ball-shaped handmade noodles . Both of them were amazing but bhagthuk was marginally better.

We again visited Kunga the day we have left Darjeeling for brunch. We ordered a veg fried rice and chilli chicken with vegetables. The portion was enough for two of us to share. The fried rice was good but the chicken was simply delicious and loaded with very fresh and just cooked veggies. One of my foodie friends told me that she had the best Momos here but we did not get to taste that.

These two places are not famous and somewhat over hyped like Glenary’s or Keventers but they will not disappoint you.