sorry to say that the absolute worst food i’ve had in rishikesh, if not all of india (!!!) was served by ganga view cafe. believe me when i say the good reviews here are because of the view and not the cuisine.
the meal in question was “sweet and sour vegetable tofu”. the contents of this dish? 6 pineapple chunks, 2 sliced mushrooms, a quartered 1/2 inch length of cucumber, half of a sliced tomato, and 5-6 sad, flavorless pieces of tofu in a pile of slimy sauce, flanked by 100 grams of rice. the taste of the sauce was unspeakably bad, like sweet pizza sauce with too much pepper. the presence of pineapple (the most abundant ‘vegetable’) was baffling and totally unwarranted in the peppery slime. it was disgusting to the point of being inedible.
was there a mistake? certainly not. when asked, the waiter confirmed, in his words, there was actually meant to be “not much veggie” in the dish called “vegetable tofu”. while i guess half of a tomato and 4 pieces of cucumber technically qualifies as “vegetable”, it doesn’t in any way represent an acceptable meal to serve for 190 rupees.
the portion size was pathetically small for such an expensive price. about half the amount of what you’d get in the restaurants nearby (no kidding).
so if you’d like to sip a coffee and look at the ganga, this may be theplacefor you. however, if you’d like to eat something reasonably named, priced, portioned, or not tasting of expired ketchup — run far, far away from the ganga view cafe.
ps. the menu prices on zomato photos are wrong. they have uniformly raised all the prices (by like 50rs.) while keeping the portions small.