Where to Eat in Kanchipuram: 5 Restaurants, Ranked

The Kanchipuram branch of A2B — Adyar Ananda Bhavan — the Chennai sweet-shop-and-tiffin chain, on Nellukara Street 341 metres from the bus stand, about four minutes on foot. It is what it is everywhere: a sweet and savoury counter at the front, a vegetarian tiffin and meals section behind, reliable, busy, priced like a chain. In a town where most of the eating is small independent messes that publish no hours at all, that predictability is the reason to know it is here. OpenStreetMap records the phone as +91 44 2723 3295.

A pure-vegetarian restaurant 393 metres north-east of the bus stand. Pure veg matters here in practice rather than as a label: pilgrims working through the temple circuit generally want somewhere they can eat between darshans without asking questions about the kitchen. ⚠ Unverified hours and no website — an OpenStreetMap survey record rather than a recommendation we have tested.

An eating house 974 metres east-north-east of the bus stand, on the side of town that runs out towards Kanchipuram East station. Another of the town's plain restaurants — the sort that runs a tiffin service morning and evening and a set meal at midday. ⚠ No website, no published hours, and we have not eaten here. Recorded from an OpenStreetMap survey because a visitor staying at the TTDC hotel on this side will otherwise find nothing marked between there and the centre.

A restaurant 283 metres north-east of the bus stand, the closest thing on this page to a first stop off the bus. In Tamil Nadu a place calling itself a hotel on its street sign is an eating house, not a place to sleep, and this is one of them — a working local restaurant among the doctors' rooms and small hospitals on this stretch. ⚠ No website, and no published menu, hours or rates. It is here because it is a real eating house three minutes from the stand, not because we have eaten in it.

A Saravana Bhavan 355 metres from the bus stand, tagged in OpenStreetMap as South Indian vegetarian. The name is the best known in the Tamil restaurant trade and is used both by the chain and by a number of unconnected local houses, so do not assume which you have walked into — the food either way is the standard tiffin and meals repertoire. Useful mainly because it is four minutes from where the buses put you down and open across the hours the temples are shut. ⚠ Hours and ownership unverified.