Chandigarh’s food culture is anchored by the chhola kulcha, the makki di roti, and the evening dhaba, but the city has expanded its palate significantly over the last decade
The Sector 26 grain market area is where Chandigarh’s most serious eating happens: dhabas that have been feeding the city since the 1960s
From the golgappe cart at Sector 17 to the fine dining of Sector 26 Madhya Marg, food in Chandigarh rewards the curious and punishes the timid
Chandigarh does not have a food identity in the way that Delhi has chaat or Amritsar has the kulcha. It has something more complicated: a city that absorbed the food memories of Partition, the cooking traditions of central and western Punjab, and the tastes of the government servant class that populated it in the 1950s and 1960s. What emerged from this combination is a food culture that is, in its best expressions, deeply satisfying.
The foundational dish is the chhola kulcha. Not the Delhi version, not the Amritsar version, but the Chandigarh version: a soft, slightly layered kulcha served with a pungent, oily, spiced chhola that does not apologise for anything. The best versions in the city are found at stalls that have been operating since before Chandigarh had sectors, run by families who learned the recipe from the generation that came from across the border.
The Sector 26 Dhaba Belt
If you want to understand Chandigarh’s food seriously, you go to the Sector 26 grain market area. This is where the dhabas are. Not the styled neo-dhaba with mood lighting and a menu that lists the same dishes as every other neo-dhaba in North India, but the actual dhaba: plastic chairs on bare floors, coal-fired tandoors, service that is perfunctory when it is good and invisible when it is not, and food that is there to be eaten.
The dal makhani here is the real thing. Eight hours in the pot, enough ghee to be impolite about, served with tandoori roti that comes direct from the tandoor and burns your fingers as it should. The sarson da saag is seasonal, available from October to March, and during those months there is no better way to eat in the Tricity.
These dhabas have been feeding Chandigarh’s truck drivers, government workers, and construction workers since the city was being built. They do not need to impress you. They just need to feed you, and they do it very well.
The Evening Golgappe Circuit
Chandigarh has a golgappe culture that is, among the residents who take these things seriously, a matter of genuine passion. Every sector has its stall, and the debates about whose tamarind water is the correct consistency, whose puri is the correct thickness, whose filling is the correct combination of potato and sprouts, are essentially endless.
The stalls at Sector 17, Sector 22, and outside the Rose Garden are among the most established. Weekend evenings, the queues at the better stalls can be twenty people long. The system is informal: you hold out your leaf plate, the vendor fills it, you eat standing up, you ask for the next batch. The entire transaction happens in seconds.
Chandigarh ka khaana simple hai lekin honest hai. Yahaan koi dikhaawa nahi hai. Jo hai, woh seedha aata hai. Makhan wala paratha, dahi, achaar. Yahi Punjab ka asli khaana hai. (Chandigarh’s food is simple but honest. There is no pretension here. What there is comes straight at you. Buttery paratha, yoghurt, pickle. This is real Punjab food.)Chef Manpreet Gill, who trained in Chandigarh before moving to a Mumbai restaurant kitchen
The Restaurant Transformation
Over the last fifteen years, Chandigarh has developed a restaurant scene that sits alongside the dhaba culture rather than replacing it. The IT corridor in Mohali and the changing demographics of the city created demand for restaurant formats that had not existed here before.
Sector 26 Madhya Marg has a cluster of restaurants in the middle and upper price range. So does the area around Elante Mall. Cafes with specialty coffee, multi-cuisine restaurants, Japanese and Chinese and Thai formats: all of these exist and find customers in the Tricity.
The interesting thing is that none of this has displaced the older culture. The dhaba in Sector 26 is as busy as it was twenty years ago. The golgappe cart outside the cinema is as patronised as ever. Chandigarh eats in layers, and the newer layers sit on top of the older ones without erasing them.
The Winter Specialities
Chandigarh’s food calendar is most vivid in winter. October brings sarson da saag and makki di roti to the dhabas. November and December bring gajar ka halwa and the first of the season’s pinni, the dense, sweet Punjab energy bar made from wheat flour, ghee, sugar, and dry fruits. January brings rewri and gajak from the street vendors.
The mustard fields turn yellow in January in the districts around Chandigarh, and this visual spectacle is matched by the fact that the saag is at its best in the same season. The combination of the landscape and the food in January is one of the most Punjab things about Punjab, and Chandigarh, sitting at the edge of this landscape, absorbs it naturally.
Eating well in Chandigarh requires no special knowledge. Follow the chai stalls, follow the queues, sit where the auto drivers sit at lunch. The rest takes care of itself.
Chhola Kulcha, Chandigarh’s iconic street food | Symbolic picture | Photo: Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA) | For representation