What to Eat in Vaishali Today?

Litti chokha

If you eat one thing, make it litti chokha. Balls of wheat dough are stuffed with sattu — roasted gram flour mixed with garlic, ginger, mustard oil and pickle spices — and baked over coal or cow-dung cake fires. They are broken open, dipped in ghee and eaten with chokha, a mash of smoked brinjal, tomato and potato. Stalls near the sites and on the Hajipur road make it fresh at lunchtime.

Sattu for breakfast

Sattu is the staple of this plain. It turns up in parathas at breakfast, in a salty or sweet drink sold from carts in summer, and inside the litti. A sattu paratha with pickle and curd is heavy enough to carry you through a morning at the ruins.

Sweets

• Thekua is a hard, crunchy biscuit of wheat flour, jaggery and sometimes coconut, pressed with a wooden mould. It is the offering at Chhath Puja, but sweet shops sell it all year, and it travels well.
• Khaja is layered, flaky pastry fried and dipped in syrup. The most famous comes from Silao near Nalanda, but Vaishali's sweet shops sell it too.
• Malpua is a soft fried pancake soaked in syrup, best eaten warm, often around festivals.

Drinks

Bihar is a dry state, so there is no beer or wine anywhere. In the heat, try sattu sharbat, lassi or sugarcane juice from a cart where the machine looks clean. Buy bottled water.

A few tips

• Vaishali has few restaurants. Eat when you see good food rather than waiting for a better place.
• Litti stalls usually run through the afternoon; by evening choices shrink.
• Mustard oil is the cooking fat here, and it has a strong taste.
• Jain visitors can ask for food without onion and garlic; say so clearly.

Where to eat each dish is on the where to eat page.