Leh Food Guide

This is based on my 2022 trip to Leh. For non-food recommendations in and around Leh, check out my main Leh post, and see my other Ladakh posts for further Ladakh recommendations. If you’re interested in food, Turtuk in particular has wonderful food. And if you want to learn more about Ladakhi food, I really liked a book called Ladakhi Kitchen which you’ll find at some bookstores in Leh.

This first part is my thoughts and observations on Ladakhi food, scroll down for recommendations.

I had no prior experience with Ladakhi food before coming to Ladakh, nor did I really know what to expect. I liked pretty much everything I ate, and loved a number of things, but I wouldn’t say I really miss it. I don’t think this would upset people there, because they seem to largely feel this way as well, considering for most of their meals most families eat minimally spiced North Indian style food. At first I thought they just did this for tourists, but I later found out this is really how they eat. We spoke to multiple families who talked about traveling to East and Southeast Asian countries and not liking the food…so they sought out Indian food. Even when we ate at a monastery it was rice, dal, and a cauliflower and cabbage sabzi. In villages local breakfasts were more common, but the rest of the meals were typically still rice, chapati, dal, sabzi (in villages it seemed to always be cauliflower). In the first weeks I was a bit annoyed at how little Ladakhi food was served, but eventually I learned to stop worrying and love the dal. But I spent two months here, if you’re here for only a week or so you should do everything in your power to eat as much Ladakhi food as possible (which is easy to do in Leh, which has great restaurants, hard to do elsewhere). 

Surprisingly there wasn’t any Kashmiri influence in the Indian cooking, except for one homestay where the hosts lived in Srinagar and for one meal they made haak saag with Kashmiri spices, and another homestay where they served kahwa. But otherwise the cooking skipped straight to the Punjab. Apparently Kashmiri wazwan plays a big role in Ladakhi weddings though. Our homestays in Leh made very good North Indian food, outside of Leh the quality tended to dip.

A lot of the Ladakhi food can be broken down into a few different categories. 

There’s the “pasta” dishes chutagi and skyu, which if you fed me and didn’t tell me where they were from I would have said Eastern Europe, being pretty simple stew like dishes with wheat dumplings, potatoes, and peas, sometimes greens and radishes which elevated them. These are the most widely served Ladakhi dishes in homes, which is weird because they’re also the most boring, though I did like them. They were never that different from chef to chef, though in homestays in Leh they are more elaborate with a wider range of vegetables, like mushrooms, broccoli, sometimes even paneer. I only had the variation made with milk a few times, and I thought that was pretty good and maybe should have been done more. They never put yak cheese (churpi) in these, and I’m not sure why because that would obviously be good. I once had them with sun dried tomatoes, and that added some much needed zing, and I’m not sure why people didn’t do that more often. In general I’d say these ranged from okay to pretty good, but I never especially loved any I had.

Then there are the noodle soup dishes, thukpa, thenthuk, etc, which are among the best things to eat in Ladakh. Very different and much better than what I’ve had at Tibetan restaurants before, though I’m not sure if this is because the Ladakhi variations are different from the Tibetan ones or it's just a home style vs. restaurant style and traditional vs simplified/homogenized thing. There are numerous variations, and every time I had them at someone’s house they were quite different. Sadly these were made very rarely! I don’t know why? The best ones had lots of vegetables, yak cheese (churpi), and homemade whole wheat noodles. The thukpas ranged from pretty good to excellent. 

Then there were the barley dishes, usually had at breakfast, made with the local staple tsampa, which is roasted barley flour. There are many, though they’re all broadly similar, basically lumps of roasted barley flour. Paba is tsampa mixed with local peas and served with a thin yogurt or buttermilk dip with greens or herbs, kholak is just the tsampa and is served with tea. Phemar is like kholak but sweetened (I probably screwed all of these descriptions up somewhat). They are all simple to make, so the quality is basically the same no matter who makes it, though the quality of the accompaniments varies. These aren’t the most exciting dishes, but barley is healthy and has an interesting peanut buttery taste to it. Everybody in Ladakh tells you that these are hard to digest for non Ladakhis but I'm not sure that's true? I think what’s happening here is that they are very dense and filling and you can fill up on a very small amount, but people visually misjudge how much they can eat and end up overeating, plus the portions are massive (maybe only Ladakhis can digest the Ladakhi portions of them?). Nobody does this there but the best way to eat tsampa is to make a porridge out of it and put fruit in, which we did with the tsampa that we took home. You can get that at De Khambir, which has some of the best barley based dishes you’ll get in Ladakh, including an excellent phemar.

Mok-moks (aka momos) are Tibetan, but Ladakhi families make them, though it seems like more of a fun party sort of dish to make than something made on a regular basis. The momos were some of the most consistently good things that I ate. The momos made at home are typically excellent, well stuffed with a variety of vegetables and often paneer, and served with great freshly chopped tomato chutneys. These are my favorite momos I’ve ever had anywhere, and I've spent a lot of time in Nepal, though they are very different.

My favorite things in Ladakhi food were just the simply cooked greens. With many of the greens they didn’t know the names in English, but I know there was bok choy and collard greens (also spinach, but spinach is boring in comparison). Some of the mystery greens were extremely flavorful. I wanted to eat these daily but unfortunately they were only sporadically made. I think people were afraid guests would find them boring?

I’ve read about a range of breads that are made, but the only one anyone seems to make today is khambir, which is often served at breakfast. I think traditionally it is dipped in tea, but I’m the kind of person who believes nothing is improved by dipping something in tea, except perhaps the tea itself. Khambir is excellent with butter and local apricot jam (and this combo does go well dipped in the butter tea). Most places just serve crappy mass produced jams but the homemade jams are excellent.

There are also a number of soups with local ingredients like barley soup and stinging nettle soup, I enjoyed them in my first few weeks there in May and early June when it was quite cold, however once it warmed up I never ordered any.

There are a few rice based dishes (dasthuk, which is rice porridge, kind of like thukpa but with rice instead of noodles, and a fried rice sort of thing), but rice isn’t grown in Ladakh and doesn’t play a role in the traditional cuisine, and these dishes were invented fairly recently. I liked the dasthuk I tried but eh, if you’re on a short trip don’t bother. If there’s one rice dish to get, it’s the Yarkandi pulao, a dish made for traders from Yarkhand back when hardly anybody could afford rice. This is on very few menus.

Desserts in Ladakh aren’t really a thing? But there are some breakfast dishes that can be had for dessert (phemar), and there’s an amazing chocolate shop called Schoko Monk making Ladakhi inspired desserts. Also, I love paktsa marku.

Food in Ladakh seemed the same wherever I went, and while surely there must be regional specials they’re basically impossible to get with the exception of Balti food which you get in Turtuk. It’s similar in a lot of ways, but has some unique dishes and seems more robustly spiced.

One thing I often heard people say about Ladakhi food is that it is bland because they don’t use spices like in Indian food. This is incorrect, though Ladakhi food is often fairly bland. I don't think spices are the answer though. The best dishes I had featured churpi, which is sour, or were served with yogurt, and there was also one dish I had with sun dried tomatoes which stood out. So I say it just needs something on the zesty, citrusy, tangy end of the spectrum rather than something to make it spicy.

The herbs there are excellent, and simple things like mint raita was better than you’d get elsewhere.

Don’t bother with any of the bottled juices, but anytime a restaurant makes juice fresh, go for it. Apricot juices in particular are great. Don’t order sea buckthorn juice without sugar as I did, though.

I don’t drink alcohol and neither should you, but my wife really liked the local barley liquor called chaang. It’s not available commercially but if you ask at a homestay they might have it.

Food in Leh:

Leh has a surprisingly good food scene, I’d say one of the best in India for a non-big city! (The caveat here is that this is not saying much, as the food scene is pretty dismal in India outside of a few big cities and Goa.) There are some great places to eat offering traditional food, and unlike most of India where it’s very rare for the food at restaurants to live up to what is served at home, some of the Ladakhi restaurants in Leh served high quality representations of the cuisine and offered a wide range of dishes. Even if you’re at a homestay, I’d recommend going out for many meals as you may not even get Ladakhi food at the homestay, and even if you do you’d likely get just one dish as many Ladakhi dishes are one bowl meals, while at a restaurant you can try many different things.

There are a few chefs doing interesting things there as well, with tasting menus based around creative uses of local ingredients. I was very pleasantly surprised with the quality and would rank Tsas up there with some of India’s best high end restaurants. I would also rank Schoko Monk, which makes excellent desserts based around local ingredients, as one of India’s best dessert shops.

Restaurants can be very slow here (I’ve had many occasions where it took 45ish minutes for the food to come after ordering), so just plan extra time for your meals, or let them know you’re in a hurry and need something that will come out fast.

Note that some of these restaurants are seasonal and might not be open if you come off-season. All of these places should be open in the summer, but if you’re here off season then call ahead or check Instagram and recent google reviews to see if they’re open.

There are also a lot of good ingredients I recommend taking home. You may only get fruit at certain times of the year, but whenever you come you can buy plenty of dried fruits everywhere as well as excellent jams (the quality on the jam varies, the brand you see in most places isn’t very good, but see my recommendation for a store called Dzomsa below). I loved the apricot kernels but you might get cyanide poisoning from eating too many? My wife mysteriously threw up a day after having a bunch of them, not sure if it’s related. I had a few a day and was fine. Apparently it’s fine if you cook them, and I didn’t have any issue with the amazing apricot kernel butter I brought home (from Dzomsa). I also really loved the puffed barley. Tsampa flour and buckwheat flour are both great to take home, though they seemed expensive wherever I saw them, but whatever. I didn’t take home any churpi (dried yak cheese), though I wish I did. I don’t know where to buy it, though, the only places I saw selling it were at the open market and I wasn’t sure about the quality, and the families we talked to make it at home. Omasila Zanskar is a great European style yak cheese which you can take home, I highly recommend it, more on that below. The herbs in Ladakh are very high quality, take them home if you can. I also recommend the dried local peas.

Starting with traditional Ladakhi food, my top recommendations are:

Artisanal Alchemy - This is a homemade meal experience from a young woman named Kunzes who gives you a 2+ hour crash course into Ladakhi food and culture. Here’s an article where she goes through 10 Ladakhi dishes, to give you a taste. It’s great especially if you have limited time in Ladakh, but even if you’re there for a while as I was, you'll still get a lot out of it. There were a few dishes we never got again, like a radish thukpa and o-skyu with sun dried tomatoes, and many of the dishes we did have elsewhere were at their best here. Kunzes mentioned that if we came back she can make us totally different dishes and we can customize the menu, and I hope to take her up on her offer one day. Kunzes is also really cool, very intelligent and passionate and interesting to talk to, and I hope we get a chance to hang out again somewhere or another, if not in Leh. 

The meal is pretty expensive (I think we paid 2500 per person, and I imagine the cost has increased since then), so I can’t say it’s a must do for everyone, but if it’s in your budget I highly recommend it and would say if you only eat one meal in Ladakh, this is the one to have. You have the option of having the meal either at her house or at Stok Palace (at a higher cost), which would be fun, but I think I preferred the home experience. The house is also a homestay called Jade House, and it’s really nice, I would definitely recommend it if you want a high end stay but also want something more personal than a hotel.

Another home meal experience I know of is in Stok (20ish minutes from Leh) at Gyap Thago Heritage Home. Unfortunately we didn’t get a chance to eat there, but I feel comfortable recommending it. We made a booking when my in-laws came to town but had to cancel because one member of our party had to be hospitalized as a result of the altitude. There’s a bit more info about the heritage home in the Stok section in my post on Leh and its surroundings.

De Khambir - Maybe my favorite Ladakhi restaurant, I went numerous times when I was there. Casual and inexpensive traditional Ladakhi food while also having some fun, creative modern Ladakhi dishes. They’re known for their khambir sandwiches, which are delicious, though I’d stick with more traditional stuff if you’re only going once (though the sandwiches do have locally inspired stuffings, and the salad is also made with unique local ingredients). In general you can’t go wrong with any of the typical Ladakhi dishes (thenthuk and paba and thangtur were good, I never tried skyu or chutagi there, the kholak-spaks was the only thing I had there that I didn’t care for, perhaps because it was over salted), but I’d go with things you can’t get elsewhere. It’s the only place in town you’ll get phemar, which they serve as a dessert. It’s a ball of barley, sugar, butter, and churpi, topped with apricot. I loved it, the flavors are well balanced to bring out the nuttiness of the barley, and though there’s sugar it's only mildly sweet. My favorite dessert in town, maybe. They sometimes have specials, so check the board, and ask if they can make paktsa markhu, which is best described as Ladakhi sweet mac and cheese. It’s just four ingredients, whole wheat dumplings, butter, churpi, and sugar. Sadly I didn’t see it anywhere else on my trip, here’s a recipe. As I’m vegetarian I didn’t try some of their hard to find dishes such as the local sausage and a local fried liver dish. There are also some buckwheat dishes, I really liked the savory buckwheat pancake called tenten, though I never ordered the buckwheat fritters (on the menu it says pakoda, not sure if it’s an actual local thing or not). It’s also a great place for breakfast to get khambir with butter and jam, dipped in butter tea. The homemade juices are great, and sometimes they have homemade apricot kombucha. One of my favorite dishes is the tsampa bowl with dried fruits, that makes for a fantastic, healthy, filling breakfast, and I’ve since made it at home, though it’s not as good as theirs. Check their Instagram for any recent specials, they may have it even if it isn’t listed. The women who run the place are very nice. They have some good local ingredients you can buy, and I’m not sure if they have them all the time but I love the Ladakhi energy balls, which are like those date and nut balls but with ingredients like tsampa, churpi, and other local stuff.

Namza - Part of a very expensive clothing store, fancier and more expensive than other Ladakhi places but still reasonably priced. It’s a very nice setting, and as with De Khambir, it’s a good place to try many of the traditional dishes, but there are many dishes you can get here that you won’t find anywhere else so seek those out. If you aren’t going to Turtuk you can get a few Balti dishes, like drapu (dumplings with walnut and apricot kernel sauce) and kisir (buckwheat pancake) with thangtur or moscat (walnut and apricot kernel sauce). I didn’t try them but there are some hard to find meat dishes like the local sausages and a mutton tartare. The Yarkandi pulao is one of their signatures, as a vegetarian it wasn’t that interesting but it was delicious, I’ve never had rice with so much ghee. This is the only restaurant that serves Ladakhi style greens, on the menu it’s listed as “spaks” which I believe just means vegetable dish, when I went it was bok choy, not sure if they switch it up. Probably my favorite thing there. They also have meat versions of this on the menu, I don’t know what those entail. On the menu it is written “traditional style curry with a perfect blend of spices” which is hilariously inaccurate, nobody would call it a curry and it isn’t really spiced (maybe the meat versions are more curry-like?). You can get this with khambir or tingmo, khambir is more traditional I think, and healthier, but it’s also way more widespread so I say indulge and get it with tingmo, or totally switch it up and get it with kisir. Namza is the only restaurant in Leh that serves o-skyu, which has a milk sauce, but it wasn’t that interesting, not nearly as delicious as the one at Artisinal Alchemy. I really liked the Tibetan dish aloo phing, which is hard to find even at places serving Tibetan food, so it’s worth ordering. I loved the apricot juice and liked the apricot cheesecake (though it’s that Indian style cheesecake which is creamy rather than cheesy), but you’ll get better and more interesting desserts elsewhere.

The clothing at the store seemed cool too. I’m not really a fashion person but I like the Ladakhi chic look. If I ever make a Chutagi Western I know where to go for the styling.

Ladakhi Organic Food Restaurant 100% Veg - This is the actual name, you’ll find it on google maps. It’s a tiny, inexpensive local place run by a woman who makes all the food. The thukpa here is the best I’ve had outside of one of my homestays. Lots of veggies and churpi. Aside from that I only had the mokmoks which were delicious and different, though more austerely stuffed than the ones I’ve had at people’s homes. Served with interesting, unique chutneys, though they only give you a tiny amount and you’ll have to ask for more like five times. You can order half portions here! Menu is small and doesn’t really have anything you won’t find anywhere else, but I’m sure it’s a good place to try various local dishes. It’s not the kind of place you’d expect to be on Instagram, but it is and there are pictures of the chef/owner going on vacations where she forages herbs and stuff. Tempted to get an Instagram account just so I can follow her. I wish I went here more often but it was out of the way from everything else in Leh. It's the one place on here that mostly caters to locals.

There are some other places offering local food, we went to the Ladakhi Women’s Cafe which is a tiny, very cheap place where some women cook right in front of you. It’s nice but I’d go with the other places over this. There were a few places I wanted to go that were closed when I was there but I think are open now, such as Solja Cafe.

High-End Modern Ladakhi Inspired Food

There are two restaurants (Tsas and Syah, but I think Syah closed?) in and around Leh that have chef’s tasting menus using a lot of local ingredients and techniques. Think farm to table, foraged ingredients, fermentation, foams, sorbets, mousses, creative uses of local flavors, artsy plating, etc etc. When I go to new places like this, I am worried that they’ll be overly gimmicky and wannabe versions of fancy restaurants, and I’ve had my share of meals like that, but I was really impressed with both restaurants, doing high quality, assured food. It’s quite a treat to get restaurants like this here, especially given the quality and range of the produce you get here. It’s also nice to see these restaurants at hotels, as hotel restaurants typically have food that is overpriced and generic. I loved both places, though if I had to pick one I’d go with Tsas, and I should note that Tsas also has a large a la carte menu that is worth going for while Syah just has a tasting menu. Both are definitely worth going for if you have time, though, and I hope to see more restaurants like these in India’s tourist destinations.

Tsas - Tsas is definitely Ladakh’s best upscale restaurant, and one of the few great high-end restaurants in India outside of the four cities that have good food scenes. It is also fully vegetarian, something I hesitate to reveal because I fear it will turn people off, but it shouldn’t, and I guess if it does you probably don’t deserve to eat here anyway. Not that this is a concern for my sophisticated readership.

The tasting menu here is something you should plan for in advance (you have to book it at least a day ahead). I forgot what it cost, but it was astonishingly reasonable for the quality (something like low 2000s per person, though I’d expect it’s gone up considerably since then though is likely still reasonable for what it is). 

When we went I believe they had only been open for under a month and we just found them while browsing on Google Maps or Instagram. There were no reviews to go by and we knew nothing about the restaurant, the chef, or the stunning new hotel it was at. I honestly didn’t have very high expectations for the food, which I figured should at least be pretty good and pretty to look at, but perhaps not much more, as experience has taught me. It hugely surprised and impressed me though, pretty much from the start of the meal. 

Every dish in the tasting menu is based around local produce, some of it foraged, and is also in some way locally inspired conceptually, though I’d hesitate to call it modern Ladakhi since it really takes a free rein with creative, experimental dishes for the majority of the meal. What I liked is that it always feels distinctive, a meal I could only have in Ladakh, unlike some high end tasting menu restaurants that feel like they could be had anywhere. It was also a fun meal, never feeling over-pretentious, and with cheerful dish descriptions from the sous-chef who we enjoyed speaking with. I wouldn’t rank it among the very top tier of tasting menus that I’ve done, but I’d rank it on par with and above many that I’ve done, usually at at least twice the price, both in India and abroad. It was consistently delicious as well as unique and memorable, and I regret that I didn’t stay long enough to try another tasting menu in a new season.

If you miss out on the tasting menu or have extra meals to allot, I also recommend coming for their a la carte menu. The menus are quite different, with the bulk of what is on the tasting menu unavailable a la carte, though when I was there a few dishes were on both menus. While the tasting menu has more creative, elaborate, and unusual dishes, the main menu is more of a multicuisine comfort food affair. It’s far from a generic hotel restaurant menu, though, as everything is unusually well crafted with high quality ingredients and full of fun little twists, and I think every dish was locally inspired in some way. From the a la carte menu, risotto is made with unhusked barley and local cheese, the fried carrots were smoked with juniper wood, tacos are made with buckwheat flour and served with apricot salsa, triple cooked fries have a cheese sauce with local hops, pizzas are served with local herbs and local herb infused oils and have some fun local toppings, etc, and none of it feels gimmicky. 

We went numerous times and had a good chunk of the menu and pretty much everything was very good. Simple stuff like the chips and dips and mezze platters were really strong. There were only a few Indian dishes on the menu, and though it was nice not seeing a generic menu with obligatory paneer and dal dishes, I actually wouldn’t have minded more Indian dishes because they were really excellent. The kebabs (made with local peas) and the yakhni were both beautifully spiced. There were also a few weird, experimental dishes on the a la carte menu and I was excited to try them, but those were the only ones that disappointed me, possibly because it was an off night and they were still finding their feet in the kitchen and not enough people order them to have refined them the way they are able to with the tasting menu. Otherwise, in general the cooking was on point. They also had a great quality breakfast/brunch menu. 

The desserts were also a bit hit and miss for me, though I feel bad saying this over two years after visiting since they may have ironed out the issues and the menu has changed considerably, and I should note that I’m generally ho-hum about desserts. I wrote some criticisms of specific desserts, but I deleted it since I found a recent menu and none were on there. Also, there were some big successes. Their barley “chocolates” were really amazing and special. I really liked the sea buckthorn and chocolate dessert, and their aquafaba marshmallow is great. I looked at a new menu and the many new desserts sound promising, most exciting to me being their take on one of my favorite Ladakhi dishes, the sweet mac and cheese-like dish paktsa markhu.

Their bar wasn’t set up yet when we went, but they also have a range of locally inspired cocktails, not that I condone drinking alcohol. If I go back I’ll try a mocktail. 

I should also mention that it’s a really beautiful space at what is one of India’s coolest hotels, and is a good example of architecture that simultaneously feels contemporary and Ladakhi. The outdoors is lovely if the weather is nice, too.

Syah - Sadly I think closed now? I’m not sure. Anyway, leaving this here in case they’re still around, and you can still go to their Udaipur restaurant.

Syah is at the stunning Sarai resort around 20 minutes from Leh, and it’s worth the trek. It is only open half the year (I think roughly April through September, the rest of the year they’re in Udaipur where I also had a great meal), and as of writing this they are only open for dinner, and unlike Tsas they only have a tasting menu and also have options for meat and fish. You have to book the meal at least a day in advance. 

The cooking style is different from Tsas, it’s simpler and less elaborate, more based on comfort than experimentation, but I don’t mean that in a bad way, and it shares an ethos of locally inspired cooking and local produce while doing something original. The early courses were good but a bit basic (soup, salad, momos) and I felt missing something to make them really stand out. The meal got more interesting and delicious as it went on, though, and some of it was really exceptional. I especially loved the skyu with bok choy and shiitake mushrooms, and I would put the desserts here above those at Tsas, with the apricot ice cream served with pickled mustard seeds and the wild caraway seed chocolates both being brilliant examples of how to get creative with desserts and totally nailing it (I also loved the barley donuts). 

It was a lot of fun coming here a few months after visiting Syah in Udaipur and having two meals that had a lot in common, with the same vision and spirit behind them and a few similar dishes, but were completely different as they drew from flavors and ingredients from different regions. I wish more destinations in India had restaurants like these that feel specific to their location even as they stray from the local cuisine.

Miscellaneous Great Places You Should Go To

Schoko Monk - I don’t like over the top statements like this, but this is probably India’s greatest dessert parlor. This tiny shop/cafe is an amazing place for chocolates, cakes, hot chocolate, coffee, crackers, and whatever else the very talented and passionate owner Saptasri comes up with, often making great use of local and seasonal ingredients. We went at least once a week when we were there, and each time there was something new and exciting to try. I mention in most of my food posts that I don’t eat a lot of sweets, partly out of health consciousness but also just because I generally find them uninteresting, too sweet, and unidimensional. I’m happy to indulge when I feel something is worth it, though, and I felt that about everything I tried here. Come here even if you don’t have a sweet tooth. Come here even if you’re dieting. Come here even if you’re diabetic (actually, uh, maybe don’t do that, check with your doctor first). 

All of the chocolates are great, but the tsampa one is a favorite, and I loved a bark with sea buckthorn and puffed barley. It was the cakes, though, that really blew me away. Some favorites were a 100% buckwheat flour cake with cherries, a “Ladakhi opera cake” with layers of sea buckthorn and apricot, and some deliciously nutty peanut and hazelnut cakes. The hot chocolate is the best I’ve ever had, and my wife liked the coffee which is from Chikmagalur. I don’t know how often she makes crackers, but there were some insanely good melt in your mouth crackers followed by some great crispy crackers. You can’t go wrong here! I see many new items have been introduced since we went there, and I hope to come back to try more one day. 

I also look forward to meeting Saptasri again. I really enjoyed getting to know her over our visits, just as she seems to enjoy getting to know her customers, and her presence at the shop takes this from only being a place to get amazing sweets to being a cozy second home and community space in Leh. She’s an impressive and inspiring person, having spent many years working at five star hotels in India and abroad before deciding to settle in Leh to open up her own place, doing pretty much everything herself. 

Dzomsa - Not a restaurant, but this small, mostly organic food store is a great place to buy local food products. Dried fruits, puffed barley with apricot kernels (an excellent healthy snack, shake it up with some dried fruits for a good basic instant granola), a variety of jams (some without sugar), dried vegetables (the carrots go well in granola, I also tasted the onions, garlic, and spinach, they were all delicious!) and more. It’s also a good place to get apricot and sea buckthorn juice. My favorite thing here, which I didn’t see anywhere else, is apricot kernel butter. Insanely good (but apricot kernels are toxic so I tried not to have too much at once, I’m confused about this though). I took this and sugar free apricot jam back to Mumbai and for a few weeks had the most wonderful breakfasts. Their descriptions say how organic everything is (some being not quite organic) and when the harvest was, I love the honesty!

Another store I liked was Organic Ladakh, which has great soaps and various other good local products. They also have amazing locally made yak cheese from a brand called Omasila Zanskar. This is a European style cheese, not like the local churpi, and it is much better quality than the European style yak cheese they sell at the German bakeries. 

The only other place I saw the Omasila Zanskar cheese was at the very fancy Dragon Supermarket, also recommended. A less fancy but equally worthwhile supermarket was called Chospa in the main market. For people whose idea of a fun time traveling is walking around supermarkets and reading the labels on everything, Leh turned out to be a surprisingly good destination.

Also, don’t miss the bakery street (the entrance to the Central Asian museum is a landmark). They sell two breads, kulcha (not like other kulchas in India, more like a biscuit) and a naan-like bread, get them fresh, they’re great, but more than that it’s just fun. 

Tibetan Food: 

Aside from Ladakhi food, the other cuisine to seek out in Ladakh is Tibetan food, though this should still be secondary to Ladakhi food. We only went for it a few times but we got some good stuff that is worth seeking out depending on how much access you have to Tibetan food in the rest of your life. Most of the Tibetan places seemed kinda touristy and had menus that were overly basic when it came to Tibetan food and overly elaborate when it came to “Chinese” food. I’m sure there are many hidden gems when it comes to the Tibetan restaurants, here are a few I found:

Chimath Tibetan Kitchen - In the main market area, upstairs in a building, right opposite Lehvanda Cafe. The sign proclaims no MSG, which caught my eye even though I’m not sure that means much of anything, but I decided to go see the menu and discovered they were closed for a week because they were town, which I think is a good signal of quality as they aren’t content to let it stay running without their supervision. I went back when it reopened and I’m glad I did. 

It’s very small, so go early to get a seat and also because stuff runs out (supposedly). Their menu is totally ridiculous, they have things like “chutagi fry” and “aloo paneer black fungus” on it, unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to order those. I ended up getting the just as ridiculous sounding “dry long thenthuk fry” (stir fried noodles, excellent, not sure if the preparation differs much from their other stir fried noodles but these were homemade and not sure their other noodles are) and “Tibetan vegetable curry” (not on the menu but someone else ordered it, also excellent, not a curry thankfully, nor some gloopy corn starch thing, just assorted vegetables cooked in a sauce, I’m not clever enough to know what was in it other than soy, though the flavors may have been the same as in the thenthuk fry, you could pretty much mix these dishes). 

The service is hilariously terrible, worth the price of admission alone, they try to dissuade you from ordering everything. We had conversations like, “What’s the best, most unique Tibetan dish?” “You can try noodles.” “I’ve tried noodles, many times in my life, actually. I’d like to try something very unique. What would you say is the most interesting Tibetan dish?” “It’s all the same.” I always like to order the most expensive dish, here the most expensive vegetarian dish was the aloo paneer black fungus. When we asked for it they said it would take a long time, we said we can wait, and then they said they were out of it. The menu had aloo phing sha (potatoes, mung bean noodles, and meat), we asked if we could get aloo phing as we’re vegetarian (“sha” is the meat in “aloo phing sha”), and they said yes and wrote the order down. The dish never came. We asked about it and the same person told us it isn’t vegetarian, we told her that we already ordered it and they said they’d make vegetarian aloo phing, and then she said they were out of potatoes. Has any restaurant in the 21st century ever been out of potatoes? Anyway, the food here is good, go here, order whatever sounds interesting, flip a coin if you have trouble deciding, it helps if you eat meat, just be firm in your ordering decisions and don’t ask for help. 

There are two places (that I know of) in the market offering laphing. One is called Maryul (which is on Google maps), the other is called Laphing Cafe (not on Google Maps but easy to find, on the opposite side of the road not far from Maryul, down some stairs, there is a sign pointing towards it). It was my first time getting laphing since my Nepal trip many years earlier, and I was happy.

Other than that, one place I wanted to go to but never got around to was called Tenzin Dickey Tibetan Restaurant. The name was promising, and I walked by many times and once walked in and asked to see the menu. I was told by someone eating there (the only person in the restaurant other than the woman who is the chef/owner) that there was no menu, they only had mokmok and thukpa at the moment but sometimes the chef makes other stuff. This to me was a sign that it’s a good place! I wasn’t hungry then, and the few times I walked by planning to eat there it was also randomly shut. Also a sign that it’s a good place! So I recommend it.

Cafes to Work From

At least when I went, cafes with decent wi-fi were pretty rare. Maybe that has changed? Also, most cafes are pretty small so not ideal for working from. The only places we had success working at were Boddhi Terrace, in the main market area, and Coffee Lounge, which is a 10 minute or so walk from there. Both are nice places which I recommend.

Boddhi Terrace - Vegan cafe, excellent wifi, this was one of our go to places to work from so we ended up trying a decent chunk of the menu. 80% of it was very good, it all fits into the healthyish comfort food category, nothing stands out as a must try, but it is well executed and higher quality than what other cafes in town are offering, and is perhaps the only cafe in town that has food as good as what you’ll get at a nice cafe in the big cities. Desserts were especially good, the standout being a hazelnut mousse cake. The coffee (from Blue Tokai I think) is served with a coconut/soy milk blend which I found to be atrocious. My wife is of a weak disposition and must have coffee many times a day, so after the disastrous attempt at drinking alternative milk coffee we went with the tahini smoothie which had an espresso shot in it, this was excellent. People working there are nice, views are nice, I recommend it. If I could give them a bit of feedback, it would be to go more local in their ingredients, incorporate more barley and buckwheat flours, showcase the local greens, etc. 

Coffee Lounge - (on Google Maps as thecoffeeloungeladakh) Nicest place in its area, which is a bit away from the main drag, excellent wifi, another good place to work, nice decor, never too busy, mostly locals coming here, my wife really liked the Blue Tokai coffee, nothing especially interesting but desserts were good quality, the food looked good, and I got the sense they put effort into things here.

Some others cafes to note, but not good for working: 

Three Wise Monkeys - Don’t think they have wifi and not a great place to sit and work, a bit small and cramped, but my wife really liked the monsoon malabar coffee, the matcha crepe cake was really good, and the fluffy Japanese cheesecake was excellent. The Japanese owner is very nice and seemed serious about tea.

Lehvanda - Cute place, nice views, no wi-fi, quite busy, lots of young locals, Blue Tokai coffee, food didn't seem special but everyone seemed happy. One couple ordered a burger, fries, pizza, pasta, croissant, waffle, and brownie all at once, most of it went to waste, and even that which didn’t go to waste got cold before they could get to it. Very bizarre, worth going here to witness such happenings. My wife really liked the coffee.

Metta Cafe - Barista was nice. Beans from Curious Life from Jaipur. Some nice books there, I loved the one about Ladakhi food. They seem to be the only place in Leh really focusing on specialty coffee, though my wife didn't like the one she got, maybe an off day. Food looks good. The wifi wasn’t working very well when we were there but they may have fixed that.

There are lots of “German bakeries,” no German people have any involvement with them though, and they mostly seemed crappy, and baked goods at them all looked so similar that I wondered if there was a central bakery somewhere that provided to all of them. The coconut cookie at one random one looked good so we got it and it was good. Bodhisattva looked better than the rest, I thought their mango pie looked especially good but I couldn’t bring myself to order mango in Ladakh. Here’s an article about the history of the "German bakeries" in South Asia, kind of interesting: https://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/Food/the-deutsche-formula/article5042055.ece

Many of the German bakeries have wheels of yak cheese from Nepal, I tried it and didn’t think it was that good, it wasn’t nearly as good as the Omasila Zanskar brand I got at the Organic Ladakh store (see above).

We also bought great sourdough bread from a Japanese lady in Stok who dropped it off in Leh a few times a week. Try messaging on their bakery or homestay Instagram pages (phone numbers are also listed).