Work through the list in order. Hide the notes when you know what to do.
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Eat chole bhature
Spiced chickpeas in a thick dark gravy with a giant fried bhature puffed up like a balloon. The Delhi breakfast, after which lunch becomes optional.
It comes with pickled onion and a green chilli, eaten alongside rather than in the gravy. The best places run only until midday.
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Try dal makhani
Black urad lentils and rajma beans simmered overnight with butter and cream. The texture is almost velvety, and that is the entire point.
Real dal makhani takes eight hours or more; the quick version is grainy and thin. Eat it with naan or jeera cumin rice.
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Eat Old Delhi kebabs
Seekh kebab of minced meat on a skewer, and galouti, a patty so soft it dissolves, invented for a toothless nawab. Eaten with thin rumali roti.
The lanes around the Jama Masjid come alive in the evening, and the same kitchens cook lamb nihari. During Ramadan the streets run all night and the choice widens.
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Try nihari
Lamb or beef simmered overnight in a thick spiced gravy with bone marrow and ginger. Originally a workers' breakfast eaten at dawn.
Traditionally eaten early in the morning with kulcha bread. The gravy is sticky from collagen rather than flour, which marks the long cooking.
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Eat a paratha
A layered flatbread stuffed with potato, radish, cauliflower or paneer and fried in ghee. Served with yoghurt, pickle and sometimes a thin gravy.
In the paratha lane off Chandni Chowk they are deep-fried rather than griddled, which is the local quirk. Ask for dahi and achar alongside.
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Try chaat
Street snacks built on contrast: golgappe filled with sour water, papdi chaat with yoghurt and chutneys, aloo tikki on the griddle. Sour, sweet, hot and crunchy at once.
A golgappa goes in whole in one bite or it bursts. Buy where the water jug is visibly refreshed and the queue never stops.
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Try butter chicken
Tandoor-cooked chicken in a tomato and cream gravy with butter and a pinch of fenugreek. Invented in Delhi in the 1940s to use up yesterday's tandoori chicken.
The sweetness should come from tomato and cream rather than sugar; a cloying version was rushed. It is eaten with naan rather than rice.
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Try biryani
Basmati rice layered with marinated meat and cooked under a sealed pastry lid. The Delhi version is gentler than the Hyderabadi one and less fiery.
The rice should be loose and unevenly coloured by saffron rather than uniformly yellow. Raita, yoghurt with cucumber, is essential alongside.
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Try rajma chawal
Red kidney beans in a spiced gravy with rice — the most domestic lunch in North India. Nothing showy: this is what people actually cook on weekdays.
Served with pickled onion and a spoon of ghee on top. Vegetarian and filling, and a good move when you have had enough meat.
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Order a thali
A tray with rice, breads, two or three gravies, dal, yoghurt, pickle and a sweet. Refills are offered free until you decline.
Work around the tray, mixing a little at a time into the rice rather than finishing bowls in order. To decline a refill, cover the plate with your hand.
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Eat kulfi Desserts and pastries
Ice cream made from reduced milk and frozen in metal cones: dense and unchurned, so it melts slowly. Served with pistachio, saffron or mango.
The falooda version with vermicelli and basil seeds is a dish of its own rather than a topping. Carts keep it in a wooden barrel of ice and salt.
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Try jalebi Desserts and pastries
Spirals of fried batter soaked in saffron syrup: crisp outside and dripping inside. In Old Delhi they are eaten at breakfast with thick rabri milk.
Eat them hot straight from the syrup; cold they go chewy. Morning shops fry them in batches from six.
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Try gulab jamun Desserts and pastries
Balls of khoya milk dough, fried and soaked in cardamom and rose syrup. Served warm, and a portion means two.
Its neighbours in the case are rasmalai in saffron milk and milk-fudge barfi. Indian sweets are very sweet, and one is usually enough.
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Drink masala chai Non-alcoholic drinks
Tea boiled together with milk, sugar, ginger and spices and poured into small glasses. Drunk several times a day at street stalls.
Ask for kam cheeni if you do not want it very sweet. In a clay kulhad the tea takes on an earthy smell; the cup is thrown away after.
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Drink lassi Non-alcoholic drinks
A yoghurt drink, salted or sweet, often with a cap of cream. The best antidote to a hot meal and a way to survive the Delhi heat.
Salted namkeen lassi handles the heat better than the sweet version. Old shops serve it in clay cups, and the portion is very dense.
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Drink nimbu pani Non-alcoholic drinks
Lime water with salt, black kala namak and sometimes cumin. Sour and salty rather than sweet, which is exactly why it works in the heat.
Buy it where the water is poured from a sealed bottle in front of you. Its relative is jaljeera, the same idea with far more spice.
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Try sugarcane juice Non-alcoholic drinks
Juice pressed from cane through rollers in front of you, with lime, ginger and black salt. A summer street drink, sweet and grassy.
Take it without ice if you are unsure where the ice came from. Drink it immediately; in ten minutes it darkens and spoils.
