VARR | Temple Food of India - Artisanal Thali Experience — Restaurant in Rishikesh

The ambience of the vegetarian restaurant is pleasant and the decor is bright and welcoming. The staff is very courteous and responsive. They have 4 kinds of Thalis that they keep rotating on a daily basis. The concept is interesting, as they serve 'prasad' from various temples of India, including Gurudwaras. You cannot choose which Thaali to have and have to go by the thali they have scheduled for the day. We had the 'Naivedyam Rajbhog' thaali. They begin the meal with a small 'puja' and offer ritualistic water to wash your hands and give 'panchamrit', along with putting a small 'tika' on your forehead. This does have a feel-good factor, provided you are religious enough. Otherwise, you can simply ignore this process, which is very short and unobtrusive in any case. They serve everything in small quantities and you can order as many refills as you want of any food item. It's an unlimited thaali, which is great for big eaters, but if you have a small appetite, how much can you really eat, eh? I must say that each and every item served to us really seemed to be prepared with care and was delicious. I have never had such tasty baingan-badi and chana stew! The pooris were small and very tasty and they also had some kind of a light filling inside. We had tiny little ragi idlis for the first time, and they were soft and nice. One of the lemon pickles that they served was exactly like my mother makes! Actually, the food was like home-made, good food. I also loved the moong daal khichdi, and it had fried peanuts in it, which went very well with it! Multiple items were served and I don't remember them all to list them here. I am sure their menu is available online or you could give them a call to ask which Thaali is being served on a particular day and what all it contains. The only reason why I haven't given 5 stars to the food is that the 'chawal ke kheer' served at the end was very average, and didn't do justice to the food that had been served earlier. We had heard that their 'imarati' is very good, but unfortunately, that was not part of the thaali that we were having that day. Where price is concerned, we paid Rs. 1000 plus taxes (total Rs. 1050) per person. You could say that it is somewhat expensive, but according to the ambience, quality of food, excellent service, unique concept and UNLIMITED thaali, I think it is definitely worth trying. The eatery is situated on the main road and you can park your car right outside it. However, there isn't much parking space, perhaps 5 to 6 cars could fit in. Also, I would recommend calling them ahead and making reservations as they sometimes have large groups of tourists that take up the whole space in the restaurant. They close for a few hours after lunch, so best to ask about their timings as well before...

This was to be one of the highlights of our Rishikesh visit, and went for dinner, very impressed with the whole place and the ambiance, great welcome and everyone was polite and cordial, they started us with mantras. Everything I had envisioned about the place was coming true. Food was thali style served in Bronze.

Then about 20 to 30 people showed up with the reservation and the whole place just collapsed. They stopped serving us for about 15 minutes while we were in the middle of dining while they were trying to accommodate this large group. Every server and every employee was just going from point A to B doing who knows what. I have never seen such chaos in a fine-dining restaurant before.

Thali is supposedly unlimited but that does not mean you will get a refill of anything other than Poori or Roti.

While I understand that this is a temple food-themed restaurant, the food was way too bland and tasteless, and just underwhelming. They charge top bucks for their food in a capitalistic way, the excuse that this is temple food will not work. I also noted very strong arrogance in some of the people which reminded me of our stay at Ganga Kinare resort. These people need to get out more and see the world.

As if that was not enough, they did not bring our change back from the payment, and we waited for a good 15 minutes, asked for the change and still nothing, then we walked out.

I will not recommend this place because the opportunity cost is too prohibitive as there are way too many awesome choices in Rishikesh, and some of the best cafes in the world.

While this may be an outlier experience, but the way the restaurant felt apart tells me there have to be some...

Ridiculous!!! Exorbitant pricing for lackluster tasteless food! Service is really bad. When u have to just serve a set menu thali (with no option for any other menu), ur service should be bang on target! No coordination between the servers, we did not get pickle and papad till the very end of our meal. Really small portions of so many items which do not work very well together. Oh, and no sharing, so if u're a new mom with small kids, please do not think that u and the kids can eat off a single thali! Pay separately for each thali and waste a lot of food too... cause kids are the best critics, and they definitely will not eat that food! So, If u r one of the posh types who want to show off that u've visited the restaurant just for the "la dee dah" experience; then go ahead! I unfortunately went there on reading the reviews and will henceforth be reading all reviews of all "exclusive" restaurants, suspiciously!!😂

I just got a reply from the owners that I had visited as a family of 5 out of which billing was done for 4. Also it seems that I came with 2 children aged 6 and 14. I would like to tell the owners that only my husband, my daughter aged 10 and me visited on the day ( it was Akshay tritiya, Saturday April 22, 2023) and no, I didn't tell the manager that I enjoyed the meal. In fact my husband did point out about the lack of coordination between the servers!!? So, I guess if someone gives a bad review, they are...