Amritsar might be the best eating city in North India, and it starts with a meal that costs nothing. Between the langar at the Golden Temple and the street kitchens of the old city, the food here isn't a side note to the trip — for a lot of travellers it's half the reason to come.
The community kitchen at the Golden Temple serves a simple vegetarian meal — dal, sabzi, roti, kheer — to tens of thousands a day, everyone seated together as equals. It is humble food, and it is one of the most moving things you'll eat anywhere, precisely because of what it stands for. Eat it with attention; it's the city's soul on a steel plate.
The city's signature is the Amritsari kulcha — a stuffed, crisp-bottomed bread baked till it blisters, torn open and loaded with butter, served with spicy chole and pickle. It's heavy, glorious morning food, and it's worth going out of your way for. Pair it with the thick, cream-topped lassi Punjab is famous for.
Punjab practically invented the tandoor, and Amritsar does tandoori and rich, buttery gravies as well as anywhere. There's a beloved fried-fish tradition too, and the wider dhaba culture — unpretentious roadside kitchens turning out food that fancy restaurants spend years trying to copy. This is where you eat like a local: standing, sitting, wherever the food is best.
Finish with jalebis fried fresh and dripping, or a warm phirni. Punjabi sweets are generous and unsubtle, in the best way — the right full stop to a city that does nothing by halves.
Amritsar feeds you body and spirit, and it does both generously. On a GoRaahi Amritsar trip we make room for all of it — the langar, the kulcha, the lassi — because the city isn't complete on an empty stomach.
Read next: North India in One Loop · Visiting the Golden Temple
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