Gangtok Food: Momos, Phagshapa, Gundruk and Chhurpi

The short answer

Gangtok's food comes from three kitchens that share one small state. The Bhutia, whose kings ruled Sikkim, brought Tibetan cooking: momos, thukpa, thenthuk, sha phaley and butter tea. The Nepali-speaking majority eat rice, dal, greens and the fermented foods of the eastern hills: gundruk, sinki, kinema and chhurpi. The Lepcha, the first people of Sikkim, cook with nettles, ferns, bamboo shoots and millet. Add the north Indian and Bengali dishes that every tourist town offers, and you will eat well and cheaply.

A plate of momos costs ₹80–150, a bowl of thukpa ₹100–180, and a full thali ₹150–300 in local places. MG Marg's restaurants charge more for the setting. Homestays on the Silk Route and in villages such as Aritar include dinner and breakfast in their rate, and that home food is often the best you will eat. Prices here are indicative for 2025–26.

Dishes to look for, and what they cost

Prices are per plate or portion in ordinary cafés and canteens; restaurants on MG Marg cost more.

Tibetan and Bhutia food in town

Momos are Gangtok's daily bread. Small cafés around MG Marg, Lal Bazaar, Tibet Road and Development Area steam them from mid-morning, in pork, chicken, vegetable and chhurpi versions, served with a clear soup and a fiery tomato and chilli sauce. Pork is the local favourite. Thukpa, a noodle soup, and thenthuk, with flat noodles pulled by hand into the pot, are the cheap, warming lunch of every working person in town.

Look also for sha phaley, a half-moon of bread stuffed with spiced minced meat and fried crisp, and tingmo, a soft steamed bun eaten with meat or vegetable curry. Gyathuk is another word you will see for noodle soup. Butter tea, salted and churned with butter, is served in Bhutia homes and some monastery canteens; try one cup for the experience. Sweet milk tea is everywhere for ₹20–40.

Phagshapa is a dish we always order: strips of pork fat and meat stewed with radish and dried red chillies, without much oil, so it tastes clean and sharp. It is a Bhutia and Sikkimese home dish that some local restaurants serve. Ask for it by name, as it is not always on English menus.

Fermented foods of the hills

The Nepali-speaking communities of Sikkim keep a set of fermented foods developed to see families through long winters and monsoons. Gundruk is leafy greens, usually mustard or radish leaves, packed tight, left to ferment for a week or two and then sun-dried; it is cooked into a sour soup or a pickle. Sinki is the same idea with radish taproots, buried or packed in a pit to ferment, then dried. Kinema is soybeans boiled, wrapped and left until sticky and strong-smelling, then cooked into a curry.

Chhurpi is cheese made from yak or cow milk. Soft chhurpi is crumbled into soups, mixed with ningro fern tips, or cooked with tomato and chilli into a hot relish. Hard chhurpi, dried until stone-hard, is chewed slowly for an hour or more, and it is sold in packs at Lal Bazaar. Dalle khursani, a small, round red chilli grown in Sikkim, is fiercely hot; it turns up in pickles, sauces and on the side of most plates.

These foods rarely appear on restaurant menus in English. The easiest place to taste them is a homestay or a small Nepali thali kitchen, where gundruk soup or sinki pickle comes with the rice. Ask, and cooks are usually delighted that you want to try.

The Lepcha, Sikkim's first people, keep their own forest kitchen, seen most in Dzongu in the north and in Lepcha villages across the state. Families cook nettle soup, fresh and fermented bamboo shoots, wild ferns and greens, millet and maize, and brew millet beer for festivals and guests. Few restaurants in Gangtok serve Lepcha food, so if you want to try it, ask a homestay in advance; some hosts are happy to cook a Lepcha meal for guests who show real interest.

Lal Bazaar and the organic state

In January 2016 Sikkim was declared India's first fully organic state, after more than a decade of phasing out chemical fertilisers and pesticides. Whatever you think of the claim's details, you will taste it in the vegetables, which come mostly from small farms on the slopes around Gangtok. Lal Bazaar, the main market below MG Marg, is the best place to see them: piles of greens, squash shoots, ferns, radish, ginger, large cardamom, dalle chillies, chhurpi and seasonal fruit such as Sikkim mandarins in winter.

Sunday is the busiest market day, when villagers come in from around Gangtok. Walk through in the morning, buy a packet of hard chhurpi or a jar of dalle pickle, and stop for momos in one of the small eateries nearby. Ask before photographing sellers.

Drinks: Temi tea and millet beer

Sikkim has one tea estate, at Temi in South Sikkim, set up by the state government in 1969 on slopes below Tendong hill. Its tea is sold in shops across Gangtok and is a good present, lighter and cheaper than a fine Darjeeling. Many cafés serve it by the cup.

Chhang is the hill name for fermented millet beer. In Limbu and other Nepali homes it is often served in a tongba, a bamboo or wooden vessel filled with fermented millet and topped up with hot water, sipped through a bamboo straw. It is mild and warming. Some homestays and local restaurants serve it; drink it slowly, and remember that altitude makes alcohol stronger. Sikkim's distilleries, at Rangpo and elsewhere, also make rum, whisky and fruit liqueurs sold cheaply in Gangtok's shops, but do not carry them on the high roads to Tsomgo or Nathu La.

Eating well on a budget

Eat breakfast and lunch where office workers and drivers eat: the canteens and small cafés off MG Marg, around Lal Bazaar and along the NH10 side of town serve momos, thukpa and thalis at half the price of the mall's restaurants. Keep MG Marg for an evening tea or a dinner out. On permit-tour days to Tsomgo and Nathu La, roadside stalls sell Maggi noodles, momos and tea at higher prices; carry snacks and water.

A traveller eating in local places spends about ₹400–700 a day. Vegetarian food is easy everywhere. Tell homestays about your diet when you book, as village kitchens cook from what they have. Drink bottled or filtered water and choose busy places where food turns over fast.

Momos are cheapest and best in the mornings and at lunchtime, when cafés steam fresh batches for office workers; by late evening many places are serving reheated ones. If you have a sensitive stomach, start with steamed vegetable momos and clear soup, and save the fried pork and dalle chilli sauce for later in the trip.

• Ask for momos 'half plate' if you want to try several kinds.
• Order phagshapa and gundruk soup by name; they are often off the printed menu.
• MG Marg bans smoking, spitting and littering, with fines.