Best restaurants in Himachal Pradesh

Top ChoiceRestaurants in Manali

The relaxed yet stylish garden-fronted restaurant at Johnson's Hotel frames a mountain view through foldaway windows, and its wood-fired pizza oven is cleverly positioned to warm the bar area in winter. Excellent European food includes lamb with mint gravy and plum-sauce spare ribs, but the standout is majestic Manali trout-fillet curry served with rice, salad and delicious madra-palak (a spinach-cheese dish).

Top ChoiceRestaurants in Kullu

Easily missed opposite the petrol station, around 2km south of central Kullu, Maitre is the most appealing Western-centric restaurant for miles around, with great cakes and coffees supplementing a wide-ranging (non-Indian) vegetarian menu featuring lasagnes, stuffed tacos and Thai salads, soups, cashew-almond sizzlers and a range of Chinese meals.

Restaurants in Manali

This mood-lit bar-restaurant with a willow-shaded riverside terrace is popular for smoking shisha pipes (₹460) to an insistently upbeat soundtrack. It also serves good lasagne, thin-crust pizza and superb fresh-trout platters: perfectly grilled fish with garlic-coriander sauce, orange and lemon garnish, and a whole array of crunchy fresh veggies. Hard to beat.

Restaurants in Kullu

Gaur Niwas is a classical if mostly ungentrified heritage house where you can savour meals from tandoori trout to fair-value thalis to penne alla zingara sitting at little slate-roofed garden pavilions or on the house's upper wooden balconies.

Restaurants in Manali

Trancey vibes and dangling prayer-catchers set the tone, and there are plenty of chess sets on the wide sunny terrace, but what really makes the climb worthwhile is staring into infinity, contemplating the dazzling panorama.

Restaurants in Shimla

Fronted by an old Fiat 1100, the enticing Simla Times combines a wonderfully panoramic open terrace area with a casually cosmopolitan indoor section of distressed tables, books, bottles and a distinctive ceiling mural. Dining-wise it's hard to beat for quality international dishes including a surprisingly impressive Thai green curry. Beers (₹450) are well chilled, cocktails are more hit-and-miss.

Restaurants in Shimla

In a distinctive all-window circular building, Ashiana is an almost-elegant restaurant for snacks, Indian and (some) Chinese food plus a few Himachali specialities, including anardana (chicken in pomegranate) and sepu vadi (lentil balls with spinach). There are fine views in both directions and a delightful sunny terrace.

Top ChoiceRestaurants in Kasol

Low-lit and atmospheric, this perennial favourite is reliable for a whole range of traveller munchies, and often serenaded by a Santana soundtrack.

Restaurants in Around Shimla

This timelessly refined restaurant offers indoor, conservatory and terrace dining, the latter with superlative views towards the distant Himalayan panorama. It's open to nonguests but only with advance reservations (available when hotel occupancy is low).

Restaurants in Manali

Upstairs, 250m south of the bus station, Vibes is a great place to try authentic, beautifully presented Himachali food that's rarely available outside local family weddings.

Restaurants in Manali

Just across the river from Old Manali, climb a short stairway to enjoy Bella Vista's high-quality vegetarian Spanish and Italian food served in a comfortably spacious setting with a florally feminine touch.

Restaurants in Manali

This slick restaurant-bar produces flavoursome international food – from roast-pumpkin soup to peri-peri chicken, quinoa salad to semi-deconstructed pad Thai (Thai noodles in tamarind sauce). The inside space is classy yet earthy, or you can relax in the riverside garden with its weeping willow fronds and Buddha rocks.

Restaurants in Norbulingka Institute

The Norbulinka's magical Hummingbird Cafe has a certain Tibetan elegance and outdoor tables that spill into the idyllic, tree-shaded rock garden.

Restaurants in Manali

This loungey restaurant-cafe with a mellow, jazzy soundtrack is good for hearty breakfasts, strong coffee and international dishes, from eggs Florentine to remarkably good Thai green curries.

Restaurants in Mcleod Ganj

One of McLeod's undisputed traveller hubs, with its shelves of books and very extensive rear terrace, well-run Nick’s goes well beyond Italian (though the thin-crust pizzas are good) to cover most veggie culinary bases plus good coffee, great cakes and signature quiche slices (₹110).

Restaurants in Barshani

'Celebrate, Meditate, Liberate' entreats this unexpectedly sophisticated cafe occupying a hard-to-beat panoramic viewpoint on a central knoll in Old Tosh.

Restaurants in Kaza

This cool little multicoloured cafe, operated by Ecosphere volunteers, offers superstrong coffee, herbal and other teas, and light dishes such as French toast, waffles, pancakes and wholewheat baked goods. Vegan options available.

Restaurants in Manali

Tibetan lutes and ornate Chinese lanterns give panel-walled Chopsticks an attractively distinctive if slightly dated feel. It's handily located just across the pedestrianised Mall from the bus station and serves a very wide range of delicious Tibetan, Chinese and pseudo-Japanese dishes that you can accompany with beers (from ₹200) and local fruit wines.

Restaurants in Mcleod Ganj

This popular, vegetarian Japanese restaurant is renowned for its daily changing set menus, but also worth visiting for its fairly authentic miso soup (₹50), okonomiyake (Japanese veg omelette) and the excellent kariage-egg-don (tempura-style veg on rice).

Restaurants in Kaza

The warm-weather terrace of the Himalayan buzzes with wise-cracking staff, youthful music and a happy graffiti-mural chic that becomes all the more enticing when strung with lights and lanterns at night.