Jain Food Explained: What It Is, What It Excludes, and Where to Eat It Abroad

Jain food is vegetarian cooking that also excludes all root and underground vegetables — no onion, garlic, potato, carrot, beetroot, ginger or turmeric root. The principle is ahimsa: harvesting a root kills the whole plant and disturbs the organisms living around it.

What Jain cooking excludes

Beyond meat, fish and eggs, strict Jain cooking leaves out onions and garlic, all tubers and roots, mushrooms and fungi, honey, and anything fermented in a way that cultivates micro-organisms. Many Jains also avoid eating after sunset, and some avoid certain vegetables during the monsoon months.

What that leaves — which is a lot

This sounds restrictive, and it is, but Gujarati and Rajasthani cooking evolved around exactly these constraints and are extraordinarily good within them. Asafoetida (hing) replaces the savoury depth of onion and garlic. Dried mango powder, tamarind and jaggery do the work of acidity and sweetness. Dhokla, khandvi, dal dhokli, panchkuti dal, most farsan and almost every Gujarati sweet are naturally Jain or trivially adapted.

How to ask a restaurant properly

Outside India, "Jain" is not universally understood, even by Indian restaurants. Asking "do you have Jain food?" often gets an optimistic yes that means "we have vegetarian." Ask specifically instead:

1. Can this be made with no onion and no garlic? 2. Is there potato or any root vegetable in it? 3. Is the base gravy made fresh, or is it pre-made with onion? The third question is the one that matters — most kitchens build every curry on a single onion-tomato base prepared in the morning, and it cannot be un-made.

Where it is easiest abroad

Cities with large Gujarati populations are straightforward: Leicester and London (Wembley, Harrow) in the UK, New Jersey and Chicago in the US, Melbourne and Sydney in Australia, and Nairobi in East Africa. In these places you will find restaurants that mark Jain items on the menu and kitchens that keep a separate no-onion-no-garlic base.

Travelling in cities without Jain options

South Indian restaurants are often the safest fallback. Idli, plain dosa, upma and coconut chutney are usually free of onion and garlic, and sambar can sometimes be made without. Always confirm — many sambar recipes include onion.