A restaurant in Rishikesh offers a taste of food of the gods
ghats, where prayer and pilgrimage are the mainstay—and yet there is something surreal and exotic about it. Perhaps it has something to do with the all-pervasive sense of calm and spirituality—extending beyond religion— that one feels there. It extends to almost everything in Rishikesh, even to the food.
Take, for instance, an experience at the restaurant VARR. As soon as you enter, a gentleman, clad in a crisp white dhoti and vermillion-hued kurta, anoints your forehead with a cooling paste of sandalwood. He then chants a few mantras as part of the achanam ritual, which involves purification of the hands with drops of ganga jal.
The river water on your palm is then replaced with a spoonful of delicious panchamrit, a concoction made with milk, ghee, honey, ganga jal, and holy basil, which is usually served after puja and havan. The gentleman ends the welcome ritual by placing around your neck a tulsi mala, a garland made from the wood of the same holy basil tree. It takes a while to realise that the person welcoming you isn’t a priest but the restaurant’s manager.
The eatery is located within Holywater by Ganga Kinare hotel in Rishikesh’s Avas Vikas Colony. With the tagline “Temple food of India", this conceptual restaurant was started in 2021 as a place that would source, refine, modify and serve offertory dishes made in temple kitchens across the country. The menu is modelled on temple prasadam and has bhog-inspired dishes curated by Chef Deepak Bhatt, who is from Uttarakhand.
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