Even the food at Raffles Jaipur is a love letter to Rajasthani royal life. As the daughter-in-law of an incredible Punjabi cook, I will always tell you that the best restaurant in all of India is my husband’s childhood home in Delhi. But Arkaa, the property’s North Indian restaurant, is now a close runner-up—and Rahul’s whole family agrees. Soon after we arrived at the hotel, we popped into the restaurant for a “light snack” before heading out on our first adventure to the nearby Amber Fort. But once we saw the menu, our plans quickly derailed. Everything looked so good that we ended up ordering an absolute feast, filled with elevated local specialties like do phool (a combo of crispy mushrooms, truffle oil, and malai broccoli, a Mughal appetizer where broccoli florets are marinated in cream); paneer soola rolls (spicy grilled paneer wrapped in flatbread), and paan patta chaat (chaat, an iconic and flavorful North Indian street snack, with surprising additions like avocado and quinoa puffs).
Photo: Courtesy of Raffles Jaipur
We happened to visit Jaipur during Navratri, a Hindu festival that honors the goddess Durga and calls for a vegetarian diet for nine days, so we didn’t even order any meat—but didn’t notice its absence, either. While Rajasthan does do meat very well (especially laal maas, a traditional mutton curry), it’s also known for its vegetarian cuisine, as the state’s dry climate makes it quite hard to raise livestock. Locals tend to rely primarily on drought-resistant legumes and grains like bajra (millet) and jowar (sorghum) as a result, and have also cultivated various vegetable preservation techniques over the years, including pickling and sun-drying. As evidenced by our major overorder, and subsequent overeating, the chefs at Arkaa know and honor these traditions all too well.
There are three other restaurants on property, too: Safir, a tea and champagne lounge; Sehara, an Italian-inspired rooftop bar; and the Writer’s Bar, a Raffles staple across all their properties. We had an especially fun time at the Writer’s Bar, thanks to Prince the bartender who insisted we try multiple cocktails including the bar’s signature Jaipur Sling. Raffles Singapore created the original Singapore Sling in 1915, but the Jaipur version features a local herbal alcohol infused with saffron, in addition to Indian gin, pineapple juice, lime, and orange liqueur. Once Prince learned that my father-in-law loves saffron, he brought us all a small sampling of the saffron liqueur to try on its own, and let’s just say it was very… potent. I hit the treadmill at the hotel gym the next morning, and am pretty sure I was sweating out notes of saffron. (Of note: While celebrating Navratri typically means skipping alcohol for nine days as well as meat, Rahul’s family made an exception for cocktails on this trip.)