Eating Through Aurangabad:
A Food Lover's 24 Hours

Most visitors to Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar (Aurangabad) come for the caves and leave for the caves. They eat at their hotel, pick up a samosa near the bus stand, and return home having missed one of the most distinctive regional food cultures in Maharashtra. The city sits at the exact crossroads of Mughal Deccani cooking, Marathwada's earthy village food, and a street food tradition that predates the mughlai restaurants that now get all the attention. Here is how to eat it properly in 24 hours.

5:30 AM — Nihari at the old city

Nihari is a pre-dawn meat stew that originated in the royal kitchens of the Mughal court and is now the morning ritual of the old city quarter near Gulmandi. A large clay pot is put on the slow heat at midnight, filled with shank-bone mutton, bone marrow, ginger, and a masala blend that each shop treats as proprietary. By 5 AM it has been cooking for five hours. It is served with the marrow scooped out of the bone, a garnish of fried onion and green chilli, and large baked bread called kulcha.

The nihari vendors open between 5:00–5:30 AM and most are sold out by 8:30 AM. The few shops around the Jama Masjid in Gulmandi have been operating continuously for three and four generations. You eat standing or on shared benches, the soup bowl in your hand, watched by the morning azaan. It is a genuinely irreplaceable experience that no restaurant version ever matches.

8:00 AM — Poha and chai at a dhaba

After a night train or an early start, the city's poha stalls near the railway station and around Kranti Chowk do the simplest version well: beaten rice, fried mustard and curry leaf, turmeric, thin-sliced onion, and a squeeze of lemon. Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar's version is drier than the Pune style and slightly more peppery. The chai here is Maharashtrian — strong, milky, steeped rather than boiled, with green cardamom. Two rupees more and you can add a small jalebi on the side.

1:00 PM — Naan Qalia: the dish the city owns

Naan Qalia is the flagship dish of Aurangabad's food identity and needs its own paragraph. Qalia is a Mughal-era mutton curry — thicker than a korma, lighter than a rogan josh — made with slow-cooked mutton on the bone, caramelised onion, and a wet masala of coriander, garam spices, and red chilli. What makes the Aurangabad version distinctive is the naan: it is a large, slightly flattened, oven-baked bread, softer than a Delhi naan and faintly sweet — a legacy of the Mughal court bakers who settled in the city under Aurangzeb.

The traditional way to eat it: tear the naan, scoop the curry — never use a spoon. The marrow bone in good Naan Qalia should slide out clean. This is a lunch dish; most of the dedicated restaurants only serve it until around 3 PM. Hotel Naivedya near the railway station and the small street-front places in the Shahaganj area are the most recommended by locals.

2:30 PM — Marathwada thali for contrast

If the Mughlai food is doing its work, a Marathwada thali is the afternoon counterweight. This is village food: jowar bhakri (sorghum flatbread, slightly smoky from the tawa), pitla (besan/chickpea flour curry, the Marathwada equivalent of dal), zunka (a thick besan sabji eaten as a vegetable course), varan-bhat (plain toor daal and rice), and always a small bowl of koshimbir — a fresh salad of grated radish, coconut, and green chilli. It is deeply filling, costs ₹80–120, and is available at any non-tourist-facing vegetarian restaurant in the city.

This is the food the cave workers ate. It is the food the weavers of Yeola eat. It is worth knowing it exists alongside the Mughlai showpieces.

6:00 PM — Street food at Gulmandi crossroads

The Gulmandi neighbourhood comes alive at dusk. What to look for:

• Sheermal: A saffron-flavoured flatbread baked in a tandoor, slightly sweet, slightly glossy. Used to mop up the last of a Naan Qalia, or eaten alone with a cup of kahwa.
• Bun Maska: The Irani café staple — a soft milk bun sliced open, filled with butter (maska), eaten with strong Irani chai in a kullad (clay cup). The Irani café culture of the Deccan plateau is distinct from anywhere else in India.
• Mirchi Bajji: Large green chillies dipped in a besan batter and deep-fried until blistered. The Marathwada version uses the milder bhavnagri chilli; even so, the heat builds. Eat standing up, with tamarind chutney, watching the bazaar.
• Paan from Sarafa Bazaar: The silver-leafed betel leaf stalls along Sarafa are a post-dinner ritual. Specify meetha paan (sweet) if you are new to it; the tobacco versions are strong.

8:30 PM — Biryani or Tandoori?

The city's biryani is the Hyderabadi-influenced Deccani style: dum-cooked, the rice and meat layered and sealed with dough before slow baking. It is less perfumed than Lucknowi, less aggressive than Kolkata — the spicing is more restrained, the rice grains longer, the meat falling-off-bone rather than chunky. The area around Station Road and the older parts of the city have the best biryani restaurants; avoid the air-conditioned hotel versions, which have been calibrated for tourists and taste accordingly.

Alternatively, the Tandoori restaurants around Adalat Road and Cidco area serve excellent seekh kebab and boti kebab (marinated goat chunks on skewers) with roomali roti — the impossibly thin bread flipped overhead like a handkerchief. These are later-night operations, picking up from around 9 PM.

10:00 PM — Dessert: Shahi Tukda or Gajak

Shahi Tukda is the city's signature dessert: thick-cut bread, fried in ghee until golden, soaked in sugar syrup, then blanketed in a thick reduced cream (rabri) and scattered with pistachios and saffron strands. It is an Aurangabad invention — or at least the local version is richer than anywhere else. Several dedicated sweet shops near Jama Masjid serve it properly cold, made fresh in the evening.

In winter months (November–February), look out for Gajak — thin, brittle sesame and jaggery slabs sold from pushcarts. It is an underrated Marathwada winter sweet that disappears from shelves by March.

What to drink

Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar is a dry city for most practical purposes — alcohol is available at licensed hotels but the street and restaurant culture is built around non-alcoholic beverages:

• Kahwa: A green tea brewed with saffron, cardamom and sometimes dried rose petals. The Kashmiri version popularised in Aurangabad's Mughal-heritage eateries.
• Solkadhi: Kokum (a purple sour fruit) extract with fresh coconut milk, lime, and coriander. Vivid pink, cooling, digestive. Essential after a heavy Naan Qalia lunch.
• Buttermilk (taak/chaas): Salted or spiced, from virtually every Marathwada restaurant. The spiced version with roasted cumin is especially good after a day in the October heat.
• Sugarcane juice: The cane press stalls near Gulmandi extract juice fresh per glass. Ask for it with lime and black salt rather than ginger if you want the cleaner, sweeter version.

Practical notes for 2026

Most street food in the old city is cash-only. UPI/QR is increasingly accepted at sit-down restaurants. Very few places near the bazaars have English menus — pointing works, and the vendors are used to tourists.

See also

• Plan Your Trip — all practical info
• 3-Day Itinerary with food stops built in
• Why a Real Paithani Saree Takes a Month to Make

Found a dish or a spot we missed? Tell us — the best food tips in this guide came from readers.