What to Eat in Bishnupur Today?

Western Bengal cooking

Bankura district belongs to the dry, red-soil west of Bengal, and its home cooking leans on posto, or poppy seed. You will meet it ground into a paste with potato (aloo posto), with fish (rui posto) and fried into crisp fritters (posto bora). Meals are lighter on spice than north Indian food and finish with something sweet.

Rice, fish and the thali

The everyday lunch is rice with dal, a fried vegetable, a curry and fish. Macher jhol is the thin, turmeric-tinted fish curry with potato that most Bengalis grew up on. The Bengali veg thali brings a sequence of small dishes: shukto (a mildly bitter vegetable stew), dal, begun bhaja (fried aubergine), a vegetable curry, chutney and a sweet. Lodge restaurants serve thalis at lunch; the where to eat page lists them.

Sweets to look for

Bishnupur is known for motichur laddu, small beads of fried gram-flour batter pressed into balls. Mecha sandesh, a gram-flour and khoya sweet dried on sal leaves, comes from Beliatore elsewhere in Bankura district, and local sweet shops often stock it. Rosogolla, sandesh and mishti doi are everywhere. In winter look for anything made with nolen gur, the new date-palm jaggery that appears from roughly December to February.

Eating on a temple day

Eat a proper breakfast before the temples, as there is little food at the monuments themselves. Lunch is the main meal, and most kitchens are busiest between about one and two in the afternoon. Buy sweets in the evening to carry home; mecha sandesh and laddus keep better than syrupy sweets.

For vegetarians

Vegetarian food is easy to find, because Bengali meals are built around rice, dal and vegetables. Ask whether a dal or vegetable dish has been cooked with fish-head or fish stock, which is common in Bengali homes.