In November of 2018, I visited India for the second time that year after falling in love with the country the first time around. For this trip, I decided to explore seven new cities with my buddy Sam from Sam & Audrey.
After an outstanding breakfast on my first morning in Bengaluru with our new friend Anashwara, our exploration of the city continued with sightseeing at some amazing local attractions and a spicy meal at a local restaurant! Come along with us as we explore the magnificent city of Bengaluru!
We started off at Bangalore Fort, a former mud fort that is now made of granite and dates back to 1537, when it was built by Kempe Gowda I during the Vijayanagara Empire. The fort played a role in the Third Mysore War when it was captured by the army of the British East India Company in March of 1791. Today, the fort’s Delhi gate and two bastions still remain, and a marble plaque commemorates the spot where the British breached the fort's wall.
Inside the massive, foot-thick gates is a temple, a little statue of Nandi (a gate-guardian deity that is usually depicted as a bull), and beautiful carvings of different animals around a tiny doorway. Throughout the fort are massive walls built with giant blocks of stone and a garden. Unlike other Indian forts I’ve visited, Bangalore Fort is free, so go check it out!
Before we headed over to Tipu Sultan’s Summer Palace, we made a quick stop for some cold and refreshing sugarcane juice with lime. It was super sweet and the perfect way to beat the Bengaluru heat!
Tipu Sultan’s Summer Palace was built in 1791 and is a beautiful example of Indo-Islamic architecture. As the name suggests, it was the summer residence of Tipu Sultan, a Mysorean ruler who died in the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War. The palace is built entirely of teak and boasts many pillars, arches, and balconies.
There’s a huge terrace inside with balconies and walkways branching off of it, as well as multiple rooms below and a garden outside. The palace is gorgeous, but beware: the entry fee for foreigners is 300 rupees, compared to just 25 for locals. If you come to take photos, be sure to bring a lens that can capture in low light.
Next, it was time for lunch at Shivaji Military Hotel, which is famous for its spicy non-veg dishes. Here, in order to get a seat, you just stand around and wait for someone to get up to leave! All patrons eat off of banana leaves, which you clean with water before you add your food.
With eight different foods on our leaves, including mutton biryani, ghee rice, chicken biryani, cucumber salad, chicken fry, mutton dry, chilli chicken, and liver, I couldn’t wait to dive in! As is tradition in South India, I ate everything with my hands, starting with the mutton biryani, which contained huge, tender chunks of mutton. Next, I tried the liver, which was so buttery and tender, and then I added the gravy from it to the biryani. It was minty and earthy and oh so good!
The mutton dry was fatty and had an unreal flavor and texture, while the chicken fry was so spicy it cleared my sinuses! The chilli chicken was also very hot, and mixing the ghee rice with the different sauces and meats was unbelievably good. It was so buttery! The milky cucumber salad helped calm down the heat. I also loved mixing the light and peppery biryani gravy with the rice.
Without a doubt, my favorite dish was the liver. The sauce and spices took it to a whole new level!
I hope you enjoyed coming along with us for our southern Indian lunch and fort and palace tour! If you did, please give this video a thumbs up and leave me a comment below! And please subscribe to my channel if you haven’t already so you don’t miss out on any of my upcoming food and travel content!
Spicy, spicy, it just cleared my sinuses.
Good afternoon everyone, this is David Hoffman from David's Been Here in beautiful Bangalore,
Karnataka, India.
I'm here with my friend Anaswara and today we're going to explore some of the must-see
sites like the Bangalore Fort behind us, we're going to go see a palace and then we're going
to go have lunch at an amazing restaurant, we're going to have some non-veg dishes.
Tell me a little bit about that restaurant.
Okay, so this place is called Shivaji Military Hotel and it's been here for quite a long
time.
And it's extremely famous in Bangalore for all the non-veg dishes it has to offer, like
the biryani and like the starters and all of that, chicken, mutton, you name it, they
have everything.
Mutton?
Yeah.
It's great.
I love mutton.
Okay, fantastic.
Let's go start exploring Bangalore.
Okay, so this fort dates back to 1537 when it was built by Tempe Gowda and when it was
built it was a mud fort and now it's made out of granite walls.
Only one part of the fort still remains today which is the part we're going to right now.
As we walk into the fort you can see these huge two wooden doors, they're massive.
This is basically around a foot, foot and a half in width, they're super tall, easily
like 30 feet in height and on top there's spikes so you can't get through here.
Wow, this is really impressive, I haven't seen doors like this in my life.
In front of us we have a small house and this looks like a small temple and you can see
right at the bottom of the steps we have like a little, I think this is like a small, what
is that?
Statue of Nandi.
Statue of Nandi?
Who's Nandi?
It's the bull.
The bull?
Okay.
It's an ancient character that's, you know, from mythology I guess, I'm not too good
with it.
Okay.
Yeah, it's quite, it's there outside most of the temples.
Okay so obviously it's a temple.
Beautiful.
So right at the entrance we have this like small doorway and as you can see right here
we have like some carvings.
This looks like an owl carved out and then I think this is beautiful, look at all these
different designs here.
I think this is actually an elephant, right?
Is that an elephant?
Like wow, the eye right there but then it has wings and it has a tail, so it's a mix
of like three animals, pretty cool.
As you walk through the fortress you can see these massive walls and these pieces of stone,
I mean look at this, this is easily like just one block right here, just giant, humongous
and I mean that's it, right?
I mean it's very, very small in terms of what you can see, you can just go in and see the
walls.
Yeah, and you can just walk around the garden and you know, it's quite peaceful for where
it is, located in the city.
Yeah, you can barely hear anybody outside.
But that's the cool part, right?
And don't you think the temperature is like 5 degrees cooler in here?
Yeah, in the shade.
In the shade of the city.
And one thing that's really cool about this is that it's a free entrance, so that's something
very different, I mean in most places around the world when you go to a fortress or a castle,
it always costs money but here it's free.
And yeah, I mean that's it, let's go see the palace?
Yeah, let's go.
As soon as we exited the fort, as you can see, there's a lot of people, there's a guy
selling cotton candy, right here we have some guys selling sugarcane water.
I love this, it's the best, this really is the best.
You want some?
Yeah.
Yeah, let's get some.
Okay, so to beat the heat here, we got some sugarcane juice, it's super sugary, obviously
sugarcane, we got some lime in it and he makes it really cold because he puts these huge
ice cubes.
Oh, this is going to be the best thing to beat the heat right now, I just chewed that
whole thing really fast.
It's so good, it's so hot, now let's go to the palace.
Thank you.
How was it bro, good?
It was amazing, the most refreshing thing you can have, hands down.
We've arrived to the Tipu Sultan's summer palace, it was built in the year 1791 and
tell me some more about it.
Yeah, so it's a good example of Hindu-Islamic architecture and it was built by Tipu Sultan
himself, so it was his summer resting place and yeah, I think it was built in 1791.
Yeah, 1791.
Let's go inside.
See the good, ooh.
It's very good.
It's a very good palace, so to see that and take a photo shoot and nice picture.
Hello.
Oh, thank you so much.
We're walking through the palace and as you can see, we're entering a terrace, huge like
25 foot terrace.
There's two levels on the top, there's like a hall that connects both sides which is connected
by two stairways and on the bottom there is multiple rooms.
The terraces are full of arches and they're completely symmetrical.
So yeah, and from the viewing gallery you can see these huge gardens.
Yeah.
Outside.
My favorite part was actually the second level.
There are some beautiful terraces that you can look out and you get numerous different
vantage points and then once you're done doing that, just take a wander around the gardens.
It's quite peaceful.
There's actually not many people exploring that area.
Yeah.
It's the less touristy part of the palace.
Yeah.
Okay, so pricing for the palace, it's a little unfair, okay?
So for foreigners, 300 each, 25 for locals.
Yeah.
That's sad.
Only 12 times more.
12 times.
And if you're looking for like photos, definitely try to get the arches.
It's really nice having like multiple arches in one like path or one like straight view.
And then besides that, lots of light outside, almost no light inside, so definitely bring
a lens that you can capture in low light.
And yeah, I think we're good.
I think we're going to go to lunch now.
Yeah.
We're going to go explore another attraction.
I've worked up an appetite.
Did you?
Yeah.
I'm still full.
I ate too much.
Oh my gosh.
Maybe another chai?
I'm a bottomless pit.
Is there chai around here?
Chai?
Yeah, probably.
Okay.
After a 20-minute Uber ride through the back streets of Bangalore, we're finally here at
the restaurant.
And luckily for us, there's no queue because usually this restaurant is extremely packed.
So what are we going to eat?
Yeah.
I guess we'll have some biryani and some nice chicken starters as well.
Let's go explore and see what they have to eat.
Okay.
So the way it works here is that you get inside and the queue is not really a queue.
It's like you stand around tables and you wait for people to like get up, right?
And then run to your seat.
And then run in to the seat.
So you have to be very strategic where you stand.
You have to be very strategic where you stand and as you can see everybody has banana leaves
and the way it works here in Southern India is you have banana leaf and then you pour
the rice and you pour the curries on top, right?
Yeah.
Awesome.
I can't wait to use my hands.
Gotta wash them.
Good.
Yeah.
With your four bottoms and sandals.
There's no system so as soon as someone gets up, you go for it.
It's like attack.
Yeah.
After standing around for like 25 minutes waiting for a table to open up, we finally
got one and we jumped on.
We still have this gentleman here but it's cool.
He's our friend.
And what we're gonna do now is we have the leaf, right?
So as soon as you get the leaf, you get some water, pour some water on top.
Okay.
And what the water does is it basically cleans the leaf.
So I just clean the leaf.
I already cleaned my hands but now I'm cleaning the leaf.
Right.
And then, right, clean it off.
Like that.
Like that, my friend.
Like that.
Nice.
Wow.
What a feast we have here.
This is probably my favorite Southern Indian lunch of all time.
Look at this.
I mean, we're eating it on top of banana leaf.
We're eating it with our hands.
That is the traditional way here in Southern India.
We have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 things, right?
Yeah, 8 things, okay?
So here we have mutton biryani.
We have ghee rice.
We have chicken biryani.
We have a cucumber salad right here.
We have chicken fry, mutton dry, chili chicken.
And then we have some liver.
The liver looks amazing and the sauce is like so rich.
I want to show you the sauce, how rich it is.
Look at this.
Just like, just like wow.
You can drink it.
No, I want to do that now.
I'll wait a sec for that.
So the way you do it is you just grab one, start breaking it up, mix it with the biryani
and then you put it like this and you go like that with your thumb, right?
So I'm going to go with my favorite thing of all time which is mutton biryani.
Oh my god, look at that.
Big portion here.
Ready?
The spice is huge.
I'm going to talk to you.
My mouth is so full.
Everybody's blown away by this.
I'm going to now, I'm going to get some of the, some liver right here.
I'm just going to eat the liver alone.
Oh yeah.
Light sauce.
Super buttery liver.
Bite into it, it falls apart.
But I'm going to get some of the delicious sauce from the liver, mix it with the biryani.
That's what you're supposed to do, right?
Mix the sauces with the rice.
Like that.
It's like a minty, earthy chutney.
I don't know how to explain it that well but I'm in love with it.
Getting messy eating South Indian food.
It's so amazing.
Over here we have mutton dry.
Oh my god, this mutton is unreal.
For the best part, mutton fat.
Chicken dry right here.
Look how red this is.
You can tell this is super hot.
It's so red.
What you're supposed to do is you're supposed to mix this with the rice.
But I'm going to have it alone first.
Look at that piece of bone.
Spicy.
It just cleared my sinuses.
Oh wow.
Super spicy.
But always delicious.
And what's next?
Oh, we forgot the chicken chili right here.
Chicken chili.
That's going to be super hot.
Super hot?
Yup.
You think so?
Yup.
Okay.
So I got some of this red sauce.
Super spicy.
So here we go.
Oh, there's the chicken biryani in there.
It's super spicy.
But it's so good.
It has like a, not an earthy, but a little bit of nutty in it.
The red one with the ghee rice.
That's what you think I should do?
Okay.
Oh my god.
It's getting soaked up in it.
It's like I'm absorbing it all like a sponge.
Oh wow.
That is so buttery.
It's ridiculous.
I mean, it basically feels like I'm having a big piece of butter with rice in it.
Not rice, but butter.
It's so crazy.
Ooh.
It's like too hot.
Do I have some of the cucumber to like calm it down?
Yeah.
Have the cucumber gravy to calm it down.
And maybe you can have some of the plain ghee rice as well to calm it down.
That's good.
It's very milky.
Gravy with biryani to put on top.
Is that good?
Yup.
Right there.
Mix it up.
Wow.
Oh.
It's just so fun.
Such a fun way to eat.
Mmm.
It's a nice chutney.
Very light.
Cool spices.
There's a lot of pepper.
Oh.
Cool.
What's your favorite one among all of this?
Favorite one?
I mean, I love the liver.
Okay.
So I just love liver.
Liver is always the same everywhere.
But here with the curry.
Just gives it a whole different world of flavors.
I mean.
Oh.
I don't know what's hot now.
Like what hit me, but I am like on fire.
It's probably the chicken.
Yeah.
It is the chicken.
The chicken's pretty good though.
You should break it up.
I didn't really have too much chicken here, but look.
We have a piece of bone here.
Mmm.
Oh.
It's an all-around amazing meal.
So many flavors.
Like if you're non-veg, like if you're not a vegetarian, you're a non-veg eater,
you will love this.
It's really an experience coming here and trying to sit down,
which is a mission.
It really is a mission.
Yeah.
We waited for like 25 plus minutes.
We jumped on a table.
We sat down.
They gave us basically everything they had available,
which was eight different items.
My favorite thing was for sure the liver.
But I love the mutton.
Very tender.
And just the whole experience is something you have to do when you come to India.
So come down to South India, come to Bangalore, come to this restaurant.
How do you say the restaurant name?
Shivaji Military Hotel.
Shivaji.
So is it a hotel as well?
Yeah.
It's a hotel.
Okay.
So it's a hotel as well, but obviously this is the restaurant.
And what time does it open?
It's open only from 12 to 3 in the afternoon and for dinner from 7.
So I suggest you get here around 10.30 and wait in line.
Yeah.
Right?
That's how it is in Bangalore.
I mean everything is like a waiting game.
Yeah.
Because the hot spots, like where the locals go, everybody goes.
Obviously, how many people are here?
Like, I don't know, five, six million people in the city.
It's crazy.
But yeah, guys, if you love this video, give me a thumbs up.
Leave me a comment below.
Subscribe to my channel, Sam's channel, and follow her on Instagram.
And we'll see you on the next travel adventure in Incredible India.
Now let me get some more of this food.
Mmm.
