Gian Lassi in Amritsar

We arrived in Amritsar on an evening flight and had less than two whole days there, so we had to make the most of it. We had a lot to do, including visiting the sights that we wanted to take our guests to, such as the Golden Temple, visiting potential hotels for our January guests and of course the food!

I have always had a weakness for dairy products, in particular curd (yoghurt) and paneer, which the state of Punjab is famous for. Gian Lassi had been highly recommended to us by several people, so we decided to make it a priority (as far as food is concerned). It was hard to find, especially for two people who were in Amritsar for the first time, but it was an interesting walk, with many small shops producing and selling snacks and sweets along the way. We stopped at a few of them to sample and purchase a few items to have along the road as we had a long drive to our next destination.

We finally found the small Gian Lassi location, a very nondescript corner shop. There were about a hundred trays of curd (yoghurt) made from unhomogenised milk stacked on top of each other, people sitting around relishing yoghurt from shallow clay bowls or sweets made from khoya, meaning dried, evaporated milk solids. The curd, with the cream on top looked delicious and I couldn’t wait to try the lassi as Punjabi lassi is one of my absolute favourite things.

The lassi is hand churned and placed in a vessel with a tap. For each order, they fill a metal cup with lassi and then place spoonfuls of cream and khoya on top. I don’t recommend going there on a full stomach but the taste was so good that I could have easily consumed two!

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It's definitely one of the places we will be taking our guests to visit on our first north India tour starting in January 2025, a tour we are most definitely looking forward to as we have several repeat guests travelling with us.