Vegetarian Food in Hampi: 7 Restaurants and What to Order

Every restaurant in Hampi is vegetarian, so the question is not where to find vegetarian food but which of the pure-veg kitchens is worth your evening. Hampi is a living temple town wrapped around the Virupaksha Temple and the ruins of Vijayanagara, and the rules that come with that are simple: no meat, no alcohol on the temple side of the river, and no smoking in public areas. The seven restaurants below are the ones we ate at across a week, with the dish worth ordering at each.

Rupee prices carry conversions at the rate of 11 September 2026, when €1 bought about ₹111 and $1 about ₹95.

7 of the best restaurants in Hampi, India for vegetarians

The 7 restaurants below are ordered the way we used them, from the all-day place you keep returning to down to the one you go to once for a specific dish. Six of them sit on or around Janata Plot, the lane running parallel to the bazaar street behind Virupaksha Temple, which means you can walk between all of them in about ten minutes.

1. Mango Tree

Mango Tree is the restaurant most people in Hampi will name first, and the mango lassi is the reason to start there. The name comes from its original riverside site under a mango grove; it moved to Janata Plot years ago and kept the kitchen. The menu is long, the wifi is the fastest in the village, and the seating is set up for staying put, which makes it the default working spot for anyone travelling with a laptop.

The food: we ate here twice, breakfast on our first morning and a long lunch that turned into afternoon tea on our last day. Order the mango lassi with whatever else you have.

Mango Tree, Janata Plot, Hampi. Open roughly 08:00 to 22:00 and closed on Sundays, which catches people out.

2. Suresh Restaurant

Suresh Restaurant is the one to pick when you want a Western dish done properly rather than an Indian one done fast. It looks like nothing from the street and nothing much inside either, and the family who run it are the reason to sit down.

The food: the homemade margherita pizza is genuinely good, which is not a sentence you expect to write about a village in northern Karnataka. If you have been on thalis for a week, this is the reset.

Suresh Restaurant, Janata Plot, Hampi.

3. Ravi’s Rose

Ravi’s Rose is a rooftop restaurant whose tagline, “a taste of many nations”, is an accurate description of the menu rather than marketing. Israeli, Mexican and Chinese dishes sit alongside the South Indian ones, and the music is slow enough that people stay for hours.

The food: order the Indian thali. Thali means plate, and what arrives is a set of small bowls that lets you taste six or seven things at once, which is the efficient way to work out what you actually like about South Indian cooking.

Ravi’s Rose, Janata Plot, Hampi.

Our guide to popular Indian dishes explains what most of those bowls contain.

4. Funky Monkey

Funky Monkey is the dinner option, up a steep flight of stairs to a rooftop with cushioned floor seating and low lighting. It looks out over the water and the town, and the climb is worth it once.

The food: we ordered a masala dosa as a last taste of the south before heading north, and it held up. Drinks cost a little more here than at the other Janata Plot places while food prices sit about the same, so the sensible order is food-led. The pasta and pizzas are there if you want them.

Funky Monkey, Janata Plot, Hampi.

5. Chill Out in Bamboo Restaurant

Chill Out in Bamboo is the riverside one, and you leave your shoes at the door along with any plan to be somewhere else soon. You eat looking at the Tungabhadra, with people climbing trees for coconuts on one side and cattle grazing on the other.

The food: the special thali is the order. The portions are small, which sounds like a complaint and is not: it slows you down enough to notice the sweet, sour and spicy elements arriving separately rather than all at once.

Bamboo Restaurant, Hampi Bazaar Street, Hampi.

6. Moon Light

Moon Light is the breakfast place at the far end of Janata Plot, run by a couple who cook everything themselves. Nothing about it is designed, and that is the appeal.

The food: they serve English, French and Indian breakfasts, and the honey, lemon and ginger tea is the thing to order at any hour. The kitchen stays open all day with a wide lunch and dinner menu, so it works as a fallback when the rooftops are full.

Moon Light, Janata Plot, Hampi.

7. 1985

1985 is the low-slung, laid-back one, with tables at floor level, cushions, wifi and a habit of changing hands every few years. Raja’s Ayurvedic massage centre is directly behind it, which is a reasonable way to spend the hour between lunch and the afternoon heat breaking.

The food: aloo paneer masala. Aloo is potato, paneer is fresh cheese, and the masala is a spice blend built around cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, cloves and black pepper. It arrives looking like a mess and that is part of it.

1985, Hampi Bazaar Street, Hampi.

Crossing the river for dinner, and what changed

The far bank of the Tungabhadra used to be the overflow dining scene, and it is much smaller than the guidebooks suggest. In March 2020, following a Supreme Court order on unauthorised construction inside the protected zone, 21 restaurants and guesthouses were demolished at Virupapura Gaddi, the strip travellers call Hippie Island. Places still operate there and it is still worth a crossing, but a list of riverside cafés written before 2020 will send you to empty ground.

The crossing itself runs from the ghat below Virupaksha Temple. Motorboats leave when they fill and coracles, the round basket boats, cross for a little more, at roughly ₹30 to ₹50 for Indian passengers and ₹100 (about €0.90, $1.05, £0.78) for foreign ones, cash only. The service runs from about 07:00 to 17:30, and it is suspended during the monsoon months when the river is high. There is no official night crossing, so do not plan a late dinner on the far bank and work out the return afterwards.

Go down to the ghats early and you may catch the temple elephant being bathed in the river, which is reason enough to be awake at that hour.

Where to stay in Hampi

Hampi’s accommodation splits by which side of the river you want to wake up on, and the four below cover the range from a room with a fan to a palace-styled resort. The temple side puts you inside the ruins and under the temple town’s rules; the far bank is quieter and depends on the ferry.

Super-budget: Rasta Homestay. Rough and ready, and cheerful with it, set in green countryside a short ride from the historic centre, with an outdoor terrace, free wifi and breakfast for a small extra charge. Check prices and availability for Rasta Homestay.

Budget: Rocky Guesthouse. In Hampi Bazaar, a couple of hundred metres from Virupaksha Temple, with mosquito nets over the beds, private bathrooms, a 24-hour desk that rents bicycles and a rooftop restaurant. Check prices and availability for Rocky Guesthouse.

Boutique: Lotus Riya. A small homestay about a ten-minute tuk-tuk ride out from the market, with air-conditioned rooms, a garden and a lounge, which is the compromise if the bazaar feels too close to the crowds. Check prices and availability for Lotus Riya.

Luxury: Evolve Back Kamalapura Palace. The former Orange County Hampi, built as a palace pastiche with stone-paved walkways, arched hallways, two restaurants and two outdoor pools, at Kamalapura on the far side of the ruins. Check prices and availability for Evolve Back Kamalapura Palace.

For whole apartments and houses rather than rooms, Vrbo is where we look once a stay runs past a few nights or the group runs past two people.

How to get to Hampi, India

Getting to Hampi means reaching Hosapete and covering the last 13 km (8.1 mi) by road. Hosapete Junction, the station still labelled Hospet in older guides, is the rail hub, and overnight trains reach it from Bengaluru, Goa and Hubballi. Fly into whichever of those three is cheapest and take the train rather than the bus, which covers the same ground less comfortably. Auto-rickshaws and local buses run the final stretch from Hosapete into Hampi Bazaar. Compare flight options and prices into Bengaluru, Goa and Hubballi before you fix the route, because the overnight train works from all three.

WonderfulWanderings Pro Tips

The 4 tips below are scheduling decisions rather than general advice, and every one of them turns on an opening time or a boat.

1. Do not save Mango Tree for a Sunday. It closes that day, and it is the one restaurant on this list people travel to Hampi specifically to eat at.
2. Work backwards from the last boat. The river crossing stops around 17:30 and there is no official night service, so dinner on the far bank means either an early meal or a bed on that side.
3. Skip the crossing entirely in the monsoon. High water suspends the ferry for days at a time between June and September, which strands the far-bank guesthouses.
4. Carry small rupee notes for the boat. The crossing is cash only and foreign passengers pay a higher fare than Indian ones, at about ₹100 (€0.90, $1.05, £0.78) one way.

About the author. The restaurant notes in this post come from Kim, a freelance writer and co-founder of the travel blog Simply Travelled, who spent a week eating her way around Hampi, and you can find her on Instagram and Pinterest. The guide is maintained by the Wonderful Wanderings editorial team. Wonderful Wanderings was founded in 2012 by Sofie Couwenbergh, and the team covers India for independent travellers, including the guesthouses, tours and kitchens worth booking, and updates this page when restaurants, ferry times and prices change.