Mysore Hotels & Resorts

You learn so much about people when you share a meal, and you learn even more if you’ve cooked it together first. On this fascinating tour you will meet your host and start with a trip to the market to buy the ingredients, vegetables such as brinjal and beans or whatever is in season. You will visit the city’s most famous market, Devaraja, which is very old and full of stalls selling produce from local farms. People enjoy seeing all the goods and learning how to choose what to buy and bargain for it.

You will return to your host’s house to prepare a typical three-course Indian meal, which will probably include local favourites such as tamarind rice, ven pongal – a lentil dish – and some vegetable curries based on what’s in season, and a Mysore dosa. It’s not a demonstration; you’re very much involved in the cooking and over four hours you will also get to learn more about what it’s like to live in the city.

Once the food is ready, it is served on banana-leaf plates in the traditional way, and you will sit down as a family to eat and talk together. It’s a relaxed, friendly experience leaving you with a true flavour of Mysore.