How Rajasthan’s desert kitchens shaped Sarvato’s menu, inside Jaipur City Palace

Even before we see the sand dunes, we feel the heat — thick, weighty, and endless. July is not when anyone chooses to travel into the desert. However, with HH Padmanabh Singh of Jaipur, chefs and researchers, we drive through Shekhawati’s arid stretches to learn how Rajasthan feeds itself when the land gives almost nothing. In kitchens perfumed with smoke and spice, we find a cuisine born not of luxury but of resourcefulness.

The research team
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

The Sarvato, our tasting menu restaurant and cocktail bar located in the nucleus of the City Palace of Jaipur, opens each season in September and closes at the end of April to wind down for peak summer. During this time we focus on researching, learning and educating ourselves on the lands that surround us and on the people that live on it.

We approach our journey into Rajasthan’s heartland as a story telling avenue — through its geography, vegetation, traditions of the communities and the nuanced cooking techniques that make the region so interesting. It is an opportunity to learn from both the communities and the royal kitchen about everyday cooking practices beyond the usual view of Rajasthan as a desert state defined by extremes of heat and cold – with supposedly limited culinary offerings.

We launched the restaurant in January 2025 and the first edition of our menu was designed to celebrate the state by creating experiential six courses that were interactive. Even the crockery played a part in the storytelling. We used pieces made from local metals — copper and kansa — so that each course became part of the experience.

From the Saffar Ka Dabba, the travelling tiffin, to the Shantranj Ki Bissat, a DIY chess board that lets diners mix and match cured vegetables, crisps, chutneys, and achars, every element invited participation and connection.

Once we felt our story had taken shape, we decided to deepen our research. The second version of the menu, which opened mid-September 2025 and will be operational until the end of April 2026, has taken a lot of inspiration from the Shekhawati region, which includes the three districts of Sikar, Churu, and Jhunjhunu.

We travel to Manpura Village, to meet the Regar community, then on to Ramgarh near Churu — one of Rajasthan’s hottest spots in summer — to learn from the cooking traditions of the Jain Baniya and Soni (goldsmith) communities. We round off the trip by exploring the temple cuisine of Salasar Balaji.

This region sits centrally, influenced by the Marwad and Ganganagar (Bagar) belts, and borders Uttar Pradesh. It is a dry, semi-arid region where essential Western Rajasthan produce — ker, sangri, kumatiya, gunda, and kachara — is highly prevalent. The cuisine is ingenious and resilient to the harsh climate, relying heavily on preservation, sun drying, and pickling.

Our trip is in July because it is a transitional period between harsh summers and approaching monsoons. Our focus remains on techniques used for preserved foods, dairy, and gut-cleansing or cooling foods. We also learn to forage ker, a vegetable which is the state symbol of Rajasthan.

The rationale for choosing these extreme, sun-baked regions, is to understand the resourcefulness of the cuisine that shines in the hotter months. Ingredients are preserved and used in multiple ways — for example, moong dal, a widely grown grain, appears in papad, kichiya, dal, khichdi, and different rotis. Millets and lentils, such as those used in bajre ki roti, are relied upon precisely because water-intensive grains are unavailable.

Preservation techniques such as pickling are used for almost everything — fenugreek seeds (dana methi), onion (pyaaz), garlic (lehsun), ginger (adrak), and even non-vegetarian ingredients like machhli (fish) and bater (quail). Dairy is popular. Chaas (buttermilk) is imperative, especially for lunch. Rajasthani kadi is thin and water-like to aid consumption in extreme heat.

Another traditional component known as Lagawan meaning “just a touch” in Shekhawati, is served in small quantities and supplemented with various chutneys (chili, kachra, garlic, etc.) and pickles. The communities prefer food with a smoky flavour cooked on a chula or sigdi (charcoal stove).

We also observe how things have changed over time. Access to modern appliances differs vastly between families. It was interesting to see how there is a move towards modern amenities while preserving traditional methods. Grains, for instance, are still often milled on a hand mill or semi-automatic mill rather than being bought pre-milled from market.

Jaipur city palace is a living museum, grand yet deeply personal, and its setting gives us the rare chance to tell Rajasthan’s story from the inside out. Surrounded by history, we try to translate the desert’s resilience and the state’s layered traditions into something that can be experienced at the table, one course at a time.

(With inputs from Sonu Kumar Singh – Executive Chef, The Sarvato; Vikram Arora – Culinary Lead; Dipali Khandelwal – Food and Culture Researcher; Ishika Solanki – PR Honar Group; Kritin Khandelwal – Photographer and storyteller)

Published – January 13, 2026 02:41 pm IST