Hubli

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We were in Hubli for roughly 24 hours in February 2023, solely to break up our travel from Hampi to a wonderful homestay called Gundi Mane up in the hills some three hours south of Hubli. Hubli isn’t a place to go too out of your way for, but it's a great place for a stopover given its location and how well connected it is with its train station and airport (the closest airport to many sites in North Karnataka including Badami). It’s fairly pleasant and it has fabulous food and some nice architecture. The same is also said to be true of the neighboring Dharwad (apparently the nicer of the two, the more suburban, higher elevation educational hub to Hubli’s commercial hub), where I will try to arrange a stopover in the future. The twin cities are part of the same municipality and I was surprised to learn that together they are together the second biggest city in Karnataka.

We stayed at Hotel Shringar Palace right by the train station, around 2k inr a night, perfectly fine for what it is, and the location was very good (the best street food area is walkable). If you want something nicer there’s a Fern (decent location) and Fortune (further out right at the airport but convenient if you have to catch a morning flight).

I hardly did anything other than visit the 11th century Chandramouleshwar Temple. It’s really great! Don’t miss it. Beyond that, I just walked around a bit on my self guided food walk in the area to the southwest of the railway station. Nothing is a must see, but there are a lot of nice old buildings. Near the station are some old cinemas that I enjoyed seeing.

The food is the main draw. Nothing is so unique that you must travel to Hubli for the purpose of eating, but there’s a lot of good food. Here are my recommendations, ranked in order of importance:

Basaveshwar Khanavali - Excellent North Karnataka style village thali, highly recommended. If you want dessert get the crisp shenga holige (with peanuts, not as good as the black sesame one we had in Bijapur and Badami but better than the soft dal holige which they also serve). There are countless places with this name, the original is at Chennamma Circle on the first floor (or second floor, for us Americans), drivers will know the location.

Girmit - A local take on bhel, unique masala, very delicious. I had from a famous cart called Hiremath towards the beginning of the Durgad Bail food street, roughly here. See how it looks in this video: https://www.facebook.com/karnatakafocusofficial/videos/must-try-if-youre-visiting-hubballiturn-on-our-post-notifications-p-h-o-t-o-alph/920755085607811/

Survarna Mandir - Apparently Hubli’s oldest restaurant. You sit in an open courtyard and feel like you’ve traveled back in time. Good place for breakfast, though I didn’t love anything I tried. I’m not a misal fan but the misal is better here than Maharashtra? If you like misal this is a must try, it’s quite unique. I was excited to try the local special “bread toast” which has butter and podi but the one here was meh, not enough of either topping, the ones in photos at other famous breakfast places look better (Gurudatta Bhavan, Lea Canteen in Dharwad). My wife said the coffee was good, I don’t remember.

Mirchi - Hubli is famous for its fried chillies. I got one from a busy stall outside of a temple (I believe Dattatreya Temple near Suvarna Mandir). I enjoyed it though don’t totally see what makes it so special… I wanted to try from the supposedly famous Akkihonda Famous Bassu Mirchi but they were shut the day we went (Monday).

Gangaram Bhille Sweet Mart - Famous place for namkeen (and one halwa, which I guess qualifies it as a sweet mart), they have a wide variety and will let you sample everything. Go in the morning, they make everything fresh daily and run out by the afternoon.

Vishal Idli Center - I’m not sure if I’ve ever had butter idli before? The dimpled idlis steamed with butter are a thing of beauty. The butter ends up overpowering the idli and chutney, but it was quite fun to try once. 

Dharwad Pedha - Dharwad Pedha is a specialty of the neighboring Dharwad. I believe this is the original location of the place that invented it, Babu Singh Thakur Pedha. All over Hubli are places selling it, many with the same name, but I don’t think any are associated with it. I tried from two places, one at this shop near the station which had a totally different Babur Singh Thakur logo (who are these “BST” imposters?), they gave free samples of the plain pedha but otherwise you have to buy a full box if you want more, though they had some larger variations for sale. I also tried at Big Mishra, which is all over town. I thought both were good and not excessively sweet. Since there are shops everywhere, I looked for one selling a box in the same packaging as seen on the website above, and it was the worst we tried by far, not soft at all (it’s supposed to be melt in your mouth), either it wasn’t fresh (the shop claimed it was from the same day) or it was repackaged.

If you eat meat, Hubli is known for Savji eateries…

I ate pretty much everywhere I wanted in Hubli, and mostly just missed the Dharwad places, my list there includes Basappa Khanavali, Lea Canteen, and of course Babu Singh Thakur Pedha.

There’s some interesting information about Hubli in here, if you can get past the paywall (It worked on my phone but not my computer).

https://www.thehindu.com/features/friday-review/flower-creeper-and-food/article4557757.ece

And here is an amazing story about Hubli’s connection to film history, from a very badly written Wikipedia page: 

“V. Shantaram's family moved from Kholapur to Hubbbali also known as Hubli in Karnataka in 1917 facing tough time financially. Shantaram a teenager then joined as a fitter in the railway workshop at Hubballi, for a salary of 8 annas (50 paise) per day, impressed by his hard work his salary was raised to 12 annas per day. In the evenings he worked as a door keeper at NEW Deccan Cinema Theatre at Hubballi. Though he was not paid for this job, he was allowed to watch all movies free. There he watched movies of Dadasaheb Phalke, father of Indian Cinema, and developed passion for the movies. He learnt photography and sign board painting in Hubballi.“