Mangalore isn’t all that interesting of a place to visit, but it’s fairly civilized and pleasant, it’s modern so it’s a decent, offbeat place to hang out and work from cafes, it’s quite small so you’ll rarely spend more than 5-10 minutes in the car (and the auto drivers don’t try to rip you off), it still has its old world charms hidden behind the rapid development, and it has extraordinary food (even for vegetarians, despite what many people told us). Unless you know someone there, there’s little reason to visit other than the food, but the food is worthwhile enough to warrant a visit, and there are some nice places to visit in the vicinity of Mangalore. See my post on Udupi and Manipal and my post on Varanashi Farm, and there are other historical sites nearby I’d like to visit as well, such as Mudbidri and Karkala. Ultimately the sites are likely less interesting than the joys of a nice homestay/farmstay nearby (or resort, if that’s more your thing), and Mangalore is a nice gateway to Tulu Nadu (which I’m embarrassed to admit I never heard of before this trip!). Also, given the regular flights it has, it makes for a good, quick getaway from a big city and I modestly recommend it.
And while it’s not an especially interesting tourist destination, Mangalore is an interesting place, very diverse and culturally complex, and the surrounding region is also culturally unique, even if that culture isn’t so easy for outsiders to grasp. I would love to get an insider’s look at Mangalore and learn my Shetty’s from my Kamat’s and everything that entails and more such specificities, but that will have to wait for another trip. I was surprised to learn that Tulu is the most spoken language in Mangalore (at 34%), followed by Konkani (14%) and then Kannada (12%), though wikipedia says 34% speak “other”. The religious diversity is apparent just from walking around, though I would have guessed it was more Christian than it is (13%). The festivals seem very interesting, I would love to see the tiger dance and bhoota kola festival. The architecture is definitely distinctive, less so in Mangalore than surrounding heritage sites. All in all, this part of coastal Karnataka has its own vibe, different from the northern parts of the state, the mountainous parts, and Bangalore and Mysore while also being distinct from other parts of the coast. There’s even a burgeoning cinema movement from the region, go to the film section below for more info.
Stuff To Do
We spent four days in Mangalore in March 2023, which was a good amount of time for us while working from home. To “see” Mangalore, one day is plenty. To “eat” Mangalore, you’ll want several weeks, if not months, if not years. Still, I actually felt reasonably satisfied with what I ate in four days, I don’t feel like I missed out on anything major, but I would have liked more time so that I wasn’t so rushed and constantly stuffing myself (which I legitimately don’t enjoy doing).
What should you do in Mangalore, other than eat? Nothing was so extraordinary that I feel it was a must see/do, but I enjoyed seeing the city’s different neighborhoods and minor sites, and it’s hard to explain but there is a unique Mangalore vibe, though that vibe would have been stronger decades back. The western part of the city is very much a bustling port town, while the eastern part is hilly and green and full of charming old bungalows (outfitted with Mangalore tiles, of course), giving it a similar feel to ungentrified parts of Bandra or Goa. Walking randomly off the main road was generally a good idea, and going by rickshaw through neighborhoods both up in the hills and closer to the docks gives you a good sense of the city’s different sections. I’ll go into the more memorable sites I saw below, but in many cases the journeys getting there are as much the point as the sites themselves.
First off, my favorite sites in Mangalore were the cinemas, see that section below!
Another favorite site was the A Albuquerque and Sons tile factory, which I believe is the last remaining Mangalore tile factory! The building is very cool, and here are some photos of the interiors. If you feel compelled to learn more about Mangalore tiles, check out more here.
The fish market is quite a sight in the morning! Definitely recommended.
The St. Aloysius Chapel is probably the biggest attraction in Mangalore, it sometimes gets referred to as India’s sistine chapel for the wall and ceiling paintings inside (there’s some good info on it in here). Very nice and worth seeing! The college grounds in general are nice (and it has a very impressive alumni list!)
There’s a pretty good museum on the property with an assortment of objects, the highlight being Mangalore’s first car (bought in 1906 by a prominent coffee dealer). There’s also whale bones, old radios, old medical equipment, etc etc, maybe worth a stroll when it’s hot outside.
Mangalore’s biggest museum is the Srimanthi Bai Memorial Government Museum, overall a bit boring but I loved the wooden sculpture gallery. Other than that there are some nice antiques. I enjoyed the drive up the hill to get there, and the building it is in is shaped like a ship, which is kind of cute. Go if you feel like it, but not a must.
Car street is nice, I liked seeing the flower market and the temples around the temple square, and there’s lots of good street food and some cute old buildings around here.
There are some nice mosques, the Zeenath Baksh Juma Masjid stands out, it is one of India’s oldest (644 AD) though the building is obviously newer. I didn’t go inside, but the wooden pillars seem pretty amazing. I like these coastal mosques which look like customs houses. The Kutch Memon Masjid is also nearby and worth checking out.
We never went to any of the beaches, but we got some nice views of the water at Sultan’s Bathery, which in itself isn’t very nice but is still worth visiting.
It’s nothing special, but one of my favorite buildings to drive by was Ladies Club. It gave me a sense of the Mangalore that was.
I never went to the Mangaladevi Temple (which gives Mangalore its name), but I did go to the Kadri Sri Manjunatheshwara Temple. The old parts of it are nice but too much of it is modern. Still, it’s really nicely situated up in the hill, and you can imagine what it once was. I enjoyed the surrounding hilly area more than the temple.
And…that’s it? But the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
The one thing I didn’t get a chance to do was visit Pilikula Heritage Village, about 30 minutes out from the city. It looks like a really nice showcase of local architecture and culture and I’ll try to go next time. That said, if you only do one thing like this in the area, you should probably make it the Hasta Shilpa Heritage Village Museum in Manipal which was really amazing.
Food
Food is the main tourist attraction in Mangalore, and though I’m vegetarian I still have recommendations that I think everybody will be happy with. For people who aren’t vegetarian, I’ll share some links that I think are helpful:
From one of Mangalore’s best chef’s Shriya Shetty (more on her later): https://www.cntraveller.in/story/where-to-eat-in-mangaluru-city-best-restaurants/
One of India’s best food writers, Anirban Blah, posted about his Mangalore trip on Instagram. Insta isn’t easily searchable, but here is one post and you can scroll through to find others from the same time period: https://www.instagram.com/anirbanblah/p/C2HpN1zy1sV/
This article by Shirin Mehrotra is good:
This five page post on Mangalore’s food scene is great but it’s from 2011 so much of it may be out of date:
I saw some good articles on Mangalore’s catholic food but no restaurant recommendations are listed. You’re on your own.
But if you’re vegetarian, just listen to me.
Regrettably I didn’t get a chance to eat any homemade food while I was there. There are various micro-cuisines on offer in Mangalore (GSB, Bunt, Udupi, and more) and I didn’t always know exactly what I was eating. No matter. Despite my ignorance, I can still break Mangalore’s food that I ate into four distinct categories:
Breakfast - Excellent with many unique items. I typically skip breakfasts while traveling but in Mangalore they are essential meals.
Banana leaf vegetarian meals - Great but only available at lunch time.
Seafood restaurants - These also have great vegetarian food, and though these are available for lunch or dinner we went for dinner so as not to miss out on the banana leaf meals at lunch time.
Street food/snacks - Delicious and a bit different from what you find elsewhere, but I think inessential given all of the great food available at the main meals so go easy on these.
On a short trip you will feel overwhelmed with all of the food to try. I encourage you to over-order and waste a lot of food, and make good use of the malls to walk around in air conditioning lunch when it is too hot to walk outside. We went to City Center mall twice after lunch to walk off our meals without breaking a sweat.
Starting with breakfast, the clear winners are two places nearby each other, New Taj Mahal Cafe and Shri Ram Bhavan (at Ayodhya Hotel). Both feature a vast range of of local breakfast items, some of which change daily and many of which are hard to find outside of Mangalore, so I say avoid regular idlis, dosas, vadas, etc. Beyond that, order whatever you want, preferably 3-4 things per person, and accept that it is okay to waste a lot of food so you can try a lot and still save ample room for lunch.
Since the restaurants are just a minute away from each other, going to both the same day for breakfast, even doing both of them multiple days in a row, is recommended to try the daily specials. Get everything you can. Some dishes I got were avalakki (a dry poha but better), neer dosa, millet pudding, dry jackfruit cake, moist jackfruit cake served in jackfruit leaves, pathrode (like patrel but better), idlis steamed in jackfruit leaves (I didn’t like these but get them anyway), and more.
There are some other iconic places we went to such as Woodlands, Indra Bhavan, Jantha Deluxe, and Hotel Kartik, and all were pretty good but the menus at them are less unique. Unfortunately we felt the filter coffee was mostly not very good anywhere, but we get it without sugar so perhaps that’s the issue.
For lunch, we had fantastic banana leaf meals at both New Taj Mahal Cafe (the same place we went for breakfast) and a small place nearby called Hotel Sri Rama. I think I’d give the edge to New Taj Mahal Cafe, it had a few more items, but Hotel Sri Rama had starfruit pickle which counts for quite a bit. Both places have people walking around with fried snacks (podis) which you pay extra for, get those too, those are great which says a lot coming from me as I usually shun fried foods. These meals are only available at lunch time.
For dinners we mostly stuck with restaurants that are known for their seafood and specifically offered ghee roast (and to reiterate, we’re vegetarian but always had options). We tried a number of famous places, and the very clear winner was Machali. The vegetarian thali was great and a very different style from the lunch places. Good simple, homestyle, and not oily vegetables. And then there’s the ghee roast, which is a good contender for the best we’ve ever had. (They offer a few different vegetarian versions, we went with paneer, mock me all you want but I happen to think the bland creaminess of paneer goes quite well with the ghee roast masala). (Others we tried were CKK and Maharaja, neither were as good, though in general we liked everything.)
For snacks I would definitely recommend trying the local version of churmuri (puffed rice/bhel). We got two, one of them from a random place and one from the famous Kamath’s Condiments (next to the more famous Balli Shop). It’s delicious and unique, with the raw mango and coconut oil flavors standing out. The other quintessential Mangalore snacks are the “podis,” which are fried snacks (fritters a la bhaji/pakoda) and have nothing to do with “gundpowder” podi. We got a handful from The Balli Shop but I personally didn’t feel like they were worth wasting calories on! Maybe go for them if you like fried stuff more than me, but I preferred the ones served with our lunch thalis (which were more spiced) and in any case felt it best to save space for more unique foods.
Some other notable things:
The founder of Natural Ice Cream is from a village outside of Mangalore, and Mangalore has some special outlets of Naturals. In the founder’s village is Bonda Factory by Naturals, which is only around 20 minutes from the city. It’s awesome! You get freshly churned tender coconut ice cream (which is a class ahead of ice cream that isn’t freshly churned) either on its own or with some toppings. We got one with jackfruit murabba. The murabba was a bit too sweet for me but I love jackfruit enough that I enjoyed it, and then we got a tender coconut float which was a scoop of it inside of tender coconut water, which balanced the sweetness of the ice cream well. You also get coconut water served on tap!
It looks like since I visited they opened a Bonda Factory in Mangalore, though google maps tells me its temporarily closed. Look into it, though. Either way, the village location is worth the detour if you have a car or if you’re going in that direction. Also exclusive to Mangalore is Naturals Just Sundaes, which has a big sundae menu with a mix of typical sundaes and local specials, some with seasonal fruits. Elaborate sundaes are a big thing in Mangalore for whatever reason, and there are some very famous places offering them, but I skipped those because I don’t think the ice cream is as good quality as Naturals in terms of the ingredients they use (If you didn’t know, Naturals only uses real fruits instead of added aromas, and they also don’t put any stabilizers or thickeners or anything in their ice cream. The ingredients are generally just milk, sugar, and real fruit/nuts/spices for whatever the flavor is.) So if you like ice cream I highly recommend both Bonda Factory and Just Sundaes, though if you only go to one, I personally prefer Bonda Factory for the fresh churned tender coconut and on tap coconut water, but it’s up to you.
For cafes to work from, the nicest is BuCo, which is by Shriya Shetty who is Mangalore’s one really well regarded chef that I’m aware of. She does pop-ups around the country and abroad, rooted in the cuisine of Mangalore with modern touches, and we tried her food once in Mumbai and thought it was wonderful. The cafe serves cafe fare rather than modern Mangalorean food, and the quality is really good and nearly everything is from scratch (they even make things like kimchi and hot sauce), and they use good ingredients. We tried a few things and I personally found the sweets too sweet and the savory options for vegetarians were too carb heavy for me (they’ve since added more options though), so food wise I prefer to stick to the local stuff in Mangalore. I’m not the audience here. But it’s a really nice space, the coffee is easily the best in Mangalore, the iced filter coffee is basically an iced latte and one of the best in India, and they have other fun drinks. I imagine anyone visiting Mangalore will want a nice AC place to retreat to in the afternoon, this would be my pick. And they occasionally do food popups and special meals, I recommend checking their Instagram to see if anything special is going on while you’re there.
For cafes, we also liked TLC Art Cafe, though if I recall correctly they didn’t have wi-fi and we had to hotspot ourselves. There was another we went to called Toast which was decent.
The Avatar Hotel is the city’s one boutique hotel, their small cafe in the lobby is a nice place to sit and work, if perhaps too small. The bar upstairs called The Loft is the one place that offers creative locally inspired cocktails. I don’t condone alcohol consumption, but my wife enjoyed whatever she got. I’d say go to the local restaurants rather than eat here, but they occasionally have interesting regional pop-ups so it’s worth checking their Instagram page when you’re there.
There are also local toddy bars, I’m not sure how wise it is to get a drink from most of them, but there there’s a new movement of toddy bar inspired family restaurants as well which seem to offer more reliably unadulterated fare. There was a National Geographic article about the Toddy New Wave, no longer online but here’s the archived article, and if that doesn’t work here’s a list by the same author.
I think I recall picking up good filter coffee powder from Shree Durga Coffee Works, but my wife doesn’t recall this. If you like collecting filter coffee powders then give it a shot, but I make no promises. There are a few other places as well.
Cinema
I saw a few very nice single screen cinemas in Mangalore and these were a highlight of my trip!
The highlight is Suchitra Prabhat on the busy main road near City Center Mall which has great architecture and seems like a nice theater to see a movie in. It has two auditoriums, one in an ugly newer building behind it, but one of them (I’m not sure which) has a 4k laser projector and the other is still 4k, and both screens I believe have Dolby Atmos. Pretty awesome! They show movies in a mix of languages, occasionally with subtitles, you can call and ask. I didn’t go to see a movie when I was there but hopefully next time I can check it out.
I saw two other single screens, both close to each other and worth visiting. The Rama Kanthi appears to be shut, but the beautiful art deco building is still standing! Down the street is the less attractive but still cool Rupavani Talkies which is still open. Many of Mangalore’s single screens have been torn down in recent years, so see these while you can.
As for films that take place in and around Mangalore, I have not seen any but there are many that seem quite good! There’s been a recent movement of filmmakers from Tulu Nadu who appear to be doing strong work. These are mostly in Kannada, I’m not sure if it’s a case that the films are really meant to be in Tulu but are made in Kannada for commercial reasons though that looks likely to me. Three filmmakers (all with the surname Shetty but I believe there’s no relation) seem to be leading the way. Raj B. Shetty’s Ondu Motteya Kathe and Garuda Gamana Vrishabha Vahana both look great, as do Rishab Shetty’s Kantara, which was a huge hit, and Rakshit Shetty’s Ulidavaru Kandanthe, and all of these films seem very rooted in the region and are highly regarded. The series Ekam looks good too. All of these are on my list, I would love to watch them. Since they’re all pretty recent I’m sure they are easy to find on streaming.
I assume there are many more films set in the region, but the only one I could find is Girish Kasaravalli’s Gulabi Talkies. I haven’t seen any of Kasaravalli’s films but he is one of the “Parallel Cinema” icons of Kannada cinema so it’s likely worth watching, though I don’t think there’s a good quality print you can find at the moment.
As for Tulu films, the Macbeth adaptation Paddayi was very well received. Other than that, Tulu films mostly look pretty bad, but I enjoyed reading a few articles about the industry:
Is there anything else set in Mangalore/Tulu Nadu? I thought there was a very popular show called The Mangalorean but it turns out I was misstaken…
Recommended Reading
I didn’t find anything worth reading on Mangalore! The city could definitely use a short book on its history and culture (i.e. that Aleph book series), or at least some lengthy articles. I read a few Wikipedia pages, that was the best I found. Despite Mangalore’s rich, diverse history, the only historical note I found that I felt was worthy of putting here is that Shahrukh Khan spent his early years in Mangalore as his grandfather was the chief engineer for the port.
I would like to read Amitav Ghosh's non-fiction book called In an Antique Land that partly takes place in Mangalore in the 1100s, but it feels too disconnected from the modern day city to really feel relevant.
I don’t know of any fiction that directly takes place in Mangalore, but there is Aravind Adiga’s short story collection Between the Assassinations which is set in a made up town very clearly inspired by Mangalore. I read it many years ago and loved it, I would rank it among my favorite short story collections (and I’m not that into short stories, I much prefer novels). I highly recommend it if you go to Mangalore or if you just want some good short stories about mostly poor people in a small Indian coastal town.
Anything else set here? I found the short story collection Gulabi Talkies by Vaidehi (translated from Kannada, and the title story is the source of the above mentioned film of the same name) which I believe is mostly set in the region, but I can’t find any reviews or even a place to buy it.
I don’t think I’d like it but here’s a book about Tulu cultural practices.
I searched for Tulu music on youtube but it didn’t sound very distinctive to me.
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