Butts Clermont Houseboats
Srinagar
Breakfast, lunch and dinner are all included in the nightly rate, and served at the dining table in the privacy of your houseboat living room.
On arrival, we were treated to a plate of Kashmiri cherries and mangoes and offered endless cups of Kashmiri kahwa.
There’s no menu, so either discuss your preferences with the staff or sit back and wait for whatever they prepare.
Breakfast was tea or Nescafé with fresh Kashmiri bread, and toast served with honey, butter and orange marmalade, followed by masala omelettes and pancakes.
For lunch they made us an incredible roast chicken, roasted on an open fire outside the kitchen, served with buttery grilled veg just like your grandma made and thick-cut chips.
Dinner was a feast, the kind of food you’d expect to be served in a traditional Kashmiri home. We were served gobhi, paneer masala, haak (a dish of Kashmiri greens), along with meat preparations like Goshtaba, mutton rishta and chicken curry. There was so much food, and we couldn’t finish it all.
Service throughout is thoughtful, attentive and punctual: if you say you want morning tea at 8.15, it will be there on the dot. Alcohol is not served.
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Menu
Though you can discuss your meal preferences with the cooks you should let them prepare what they know best, in this case Kashmiri and old-school Continental. All of them have been working with the family for decades and understand the complexities of Kashmiri food, and the joys of a good roast with veg and chips.
Dining nearby
Everyone in Srinagar – local or tourist alike – swears by the Kashmiri food at Adhoos’ Hotel at Polo Ground. They’re right, the food is excellent, the atmosphere pleasant, and it’s very reasonably priced.
If you’re feeling adventurous, you could walk down to the Hazratbal Shrine complex about a kilometere way from Butts Clermont, where sizzling, marinated cuts of meat are grilled on open fires and sold by a line of vendors on the street just behind the mosque.
The Lalit Hotel is famed for its tandoori trout, and the Taj Hotel has an expensive, reasonably good multi-cuisine restaurant where you could find some decent Western food when Kashmiri all gets a bit too much.