Agra Restaurants

The restaurants at Agra serve delicious, mouth watering Mogul Non veg dishes. One should not miss it. The food given at the hotel you are staying in may not satisfy your palate. So go for these restaurants and hope for a never forgetting eating experience.

Favorite Dish: All the Mogul non veg dishes are great especially the chicken dishes. You could go for Tandoori Chicken (Roasted chicken), Chicken curry, or Kadhai chicken and for Mutton they have Mutton Afghani, mutton rogan josh and barbecue.

Very close to the hotel we stopped in and a fraction of the price of their restaurant. We visited twice and enjoyed our food both times and with no unpleasant after effects!
It's airconditioned inside with a large outdoor eating area too, chose inside ourselves (mozzies). Vegetarian options are very good here and all served with a smile, good prices too.

Be careful of where you choose to eat. Delhi-belly exists. It sounds like awfully trite advice but I have reason. In all my experience of backpacking (and living for years in India) it is safe to assume I can gracefully withstand much of the shabby food that one comes across. However, Agra was spectacular in that sense. At a dhaba (OK, my fault) or even at a LP & Rough Guides favored place like Chiman Puri Wala, I got hit. So fellow travelers, take extra precaution in this city - lightning Can strike you twice.

There are several restaurants and hotels in the Taj Ganj area with a rooftop restaurant. Some have a good view over Taj Mahal, others doesn’t. One of the best views is from Saniya Palace Restaurant and it was also one of the most popular ones. As it can be very hot in Agra it is nice to sit on a rooftop in the evening and feel the breeze, overlooking Taj Mahal and maybe a few kites flying in the air.
There were quite many flies on the table cloths though!
I came here for dinner twice and service was good. This is what I paid in July 2010:
Lemon soda Rs 20
Plain nan Rs 20
Navratan korma Rs 120
Malai Kofta Rs 110

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At Hotel Sheela there is a restaurant serving breakfast, lunch and dinner and you can have both Indian food or western food like pasta. It is a nice relaxing place to sit in, but the bad thing with the restaurant is that there is no roof over the outdoor area to protect you from rain, and inside the air condition is too cold. To me it looked nicer in old photos when there was no air-conditioned indoor area.
I was disappointed that there were no fresh fruit juices on the menu. This is what I paid for a few things in July 2010:
Black coffee Rs 20
Butter toast (two pieces) Rs 20
Omelette (two eggs) Rs 40
Spaghetti with tomato sauce Rs 90
Soft drinks Rs 20
Chicken Sandwich (small, only two pieces of bread) Rs 80
French fries

I remember very friendly people running this place. We had a lovely aloo tomato curry with chapattis, which cost 90rupees. Handily this place was just across the road from the Shanti Lodge Hotel.

Their business card subtitles restaurant 'Tibetan Kitchen', and advertises Chinese, Continental, Korean and Japanese food too, but the local dishes are good quality.

The rough guide described it as the only place worth going to near the Taj, and it was good.
Just outside on the left by the East Gate, the only place that did not have people outside trying to drag you in
Food was better than the other places we had had in town and a lot cheaper, i liked it

Berttie

http://adegreeaday.blogspot.com/

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OK, by now you see the "only restaurant in Agra" joke. This place is called "ONLY". It was recommended to us by our local host (Mr. Nadeem Khan, see my separate tip concerning Nadeem) in Agra. We asked for a nice local place with good food and excellent food safety standards. He said that Only would make us happy, and that it served Indian food, along with other Asian dishes.

The ride to Only from our hotel (which is out near the East Gate of the Taj) only took about 10 minutes, and that's because of heavy traffic. Only is a pleasant little place with an interesting and simple interior.... the entire ceiling on the inside is made up of heavily lacquered bamboo. We were in Agra during a dry season, and we surmised that Only MIGHT have a little leak problem when the monsoons happen. Confirming our suspicions, we saw a "roped off table" and some strategically placed buckets over in the corner. :)

The food at Only is good and tasty. It's nothing fancy, and it's probably geared a little more to the Anglo-American visitor than the native Agran, meaning that it's not quite as spicy as you'd probably find in some less-tourist-visited spots. Still, there's a nice kick to many of the dishes, and I have to tell you that Only had THE best Butter Chicken that I had on my trip. A perfect sauce with a nice complexity - one of those items that each time you savored it, another of the spices would get your attention. VERY good. As for the tourist label, do consider this... Only is a recommended entry in the Rough Guide to India, 2008. These guys generally have a true disdain for anything they feel is totally tourist, so perhaps Only is a bit more genuine than I may have indicated. Whatever its culinary DNA, I think you'll enjoy your visit.

My daughter had one of the Chinese dishes, and she was pleased. There was one very funny part. Sara wanted an egg roll, and when it came, it was maybe 10 times larger than the sort of egg roll you'd see at a Chinese restaurant in America. It's a good thing that we didn't get her two, I'd say. The photo below shows Sara's giant egg roll.

Only is a good place to go if you'd like to eat somewhere other than your hotel. Good food, friendly service, moderate prices and excellent food safety. Oh yes, one other important thing.... they have a very functional air conditioner.

Favorite Dish: As I say above, their Butter Chicken was the best I've ever had. Perfect. I'm still thinking about it. Like I say, the sauce was layered in complexity. I think that it's really cool when you can keep getting different sensations and tastes as you eat the same sauce... that's really a mark of very special spicing and blend.

As for drinks, I highly recommend - anywhere in India - to get yourself a cold Kingfisher Beer. Tasty brew indeed.

Dishes are reasonably priced. Most of the main dishes were approximately 150-200 Rs, meaning (at the time) about US$3-$4.