Kashmiri Wazwan: Every Dish, the Order of Courses and What It Costs in Srinagar (2026-27)

Wazwan is the feast Kashmir cooks for its weddings: a long run of mutton dishes, cooked through the night over wood fires by hereditary chefs called wazas, and served on a copper trami that four people share. It is part of our guide to Kashmiri food, and this page is the one I would send a friend before their first trami.

The last full Wazwan our family sat down to was my uncle's wedding, in September 2026. I love every dish on it, but there are three I would never skip: rogan josh, tabak maaz and yakhni. And I always go back to the chutneys: the spicy, tangy onion one, and the walnut chutney, which has been my favourite all my life.

Below: what Wazwan is, how a waza cooks it, the order the courses come in, what every dish is, how to eat at a trami, what it costs in Srinagar this year, and the two restaurants I send friends to.

What is Wazwan?

Wazwan is a multi-course Kashmiri feast, almost all of it meat, and the traditional centrepiece of a Kashmiri wedding. The name joins two Kashmiri words: waz, a cook, and wan, a shop. The cooks are the wazas, and the master who runs the kitchen is the vaste waze, or wasta.

How many dishes? It depends on who you ask and what the family can afford. The royal Wazwan is counted at 36 courses, 15 to 30 of them meat, on the Budgam district administration's page about the dish. Ghulam Nabi Baba, a 74-year-old waza photographed by Reuters for an Al Jazeera feature on 30 September 2026, says the menu began with seven mutton dishes and is now around 20. The number of dishes, and the amount of meat, still say something about the family's standing.

Seven dishes are treated as the must-haves at any Wazwan, according to the Budgam district page:

1. Tabak maaz: lamb ribs simmered with spices, then fried in ghee
2. Rista: pounded mutton meatballs in a fiery red gravy
3. Rogan josh: mutton in a red gravy of Kashmiri chilli and pran
4. Daniwal korma: mutton in yoghurt and onion, finished with coriander
5. Aab gosht: lamb cooked in milk with cardamom
6. Marchwangan korma: the fiery chilli korma
7. Gushtaba: the big pounded-mutton meatball in yoghurt gravy that ends the meal

What is it made of? Mutton and lamb above all, with some chicken, cooked with yoghurt, milk, ghee, Kashmiri chilli, pran (the Kashmiri shallot), mawal (the dried cockscomb flower that gives rogan josh its red) and whole spices such as cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, fennel and dried ginger. Every dish is halal. Wikipedia lists beef among the meats, but the Wazwan dishes on the Ahdoos and Mughal Darbar menus we read are all mutton and chicken; if beef matters to you either way, ask before you order.

The cooks came from Central Asia. The Incredible India guide to Wazwan dates it to 1398, when Timur's invasion brought skilled cooks from Samarkand; the Reuters feature places their arrival in the 14th century, alongside the carpet and shawl weavers. Baba's own forefathers settled in Srinagar's old city, in the community of cooks known as Wazpora.

Governments have tried to shrink it. A 2004 guest control order capped the meat at 100 kg for a wedding Wazwan and was withdrawn after it angered people (Outlook, 2022). In February 2017 the state government capped wedding guests at 500 for a daughter's wedding and 400 for a son's, with a limit on the menu, from 1 April 2017 (Scroll).

How a waza cooks Wazwan

A wedding Wazwan is not cooked in a restaurant kitchen. A team of wazas sets up a temporary kitchen at the family's home and cooks the meat courses overnight, under the master waza. Sahapedia's account of the craft puts a typical wedding at 200 to 300 kg of meat and three or four wazas with their assistants. Reuters puts today's average at about 200 kg; Baba once cooked 4,500 kg for a single wedding, forty years ago.

• The pounding. For rista and gushtaba, the raw mutton is beaten with a wooden mallet on a flat stone, with fresh fat worked in until the paste turns pale pink, then seasoned with cardamom and salt and rolled into balls: smaller for rista, larger for gushtaba.
• The fire. Everything cooks in large copper pots, the deg, over dry wood from fruit trees such as apple, walnut and plum.
• The pran. The Kashmiri shallot is what sets Wazwan apart from Mughlai cooking elsewhere. For every 100 kg of Wazwan, the wazas need 7 to 10 kg of pran paste, cleaned, chopped, fried and ground.
• The season. Weddings run from May to October, and in those months a waza's day can stretch to 18 or 20 hours. Some younger cooks have moved to restaurant work; Baba's son opened a restaurant instead of cooking weddings.

At home we still do it the old way. When friends or guests come, the family has a waza cook it fresh. A Wazwan cooked by a waza for a family gathering is a different meal from a restaurant trami; if you have friends in Kashmir, that is the one to be invited to.

The order of courses, from the first trami to gushtaba

Wazwan comes in a fixed order: hand washing, a first trami already laid with rice and the dry dishes, then the curries one by one, and gushtaba last. When the gushtaba arrives, the main meal is over.

1. Hand washing. Attendants carry a portable basin, the tash-t-naer, from guest to guest before anyone eats.
2. The first trami. It arrives heaped with rice, quartered by two seekh kababs, with four pieces of methi maaz, two tabak maaz, one safed kokur (chicken in a white sauce) and one zafran kokur (chicken in saffron). Yoghurt and the chutneys come separately, in small earthen pots.
3. The curries. The wazas then serve up to about 20 more dishes onto the trami, a portion at a time. A Srinagar restaurant chef gave ETV Bharat the order in December 2021: rista first, then rogan josh, ending with gushtaba. In between come dishes such as daniphol, aab gosht, daniwal korma and marchwangan korma.
4. Gushtaba. The large, soft meatball in yoghurt gravy closes the main course. Sahapedia notes that one gushtaba of 200 to 400 g serves the four at a trami, and the eldest portions it out.
5. Dessert and kahwa. A hot sweet in winter and a cold one in summer, then kahwa, the green tea with cinnamon, cardamom and saffron that ends the feast.

Wazwan dishes: what each one is

These are the dishes you will meet on a wedding trami or a restaurant Wazwan menu. Spellings change from menu to menu (gushtaba or goshtaba, tabak maaz or tabakh maaz), so look for the sound of the name rather than the letters.

Sources for the descriptions: the Budgam district page, Wikipedia, Sahapedia, the Incredible India guide and the Asia Media Centre (May 2024). The Incredible India guide says the marchwangan korma alone takes three-quarters of the chillies in a Wazwan.

The three I never skip

Rogan josh, tabak maaz and yakhni. Rogan josh is the red curry everyone knows by name, tabak maaz the fried ribs, and yakhni the mild one, mutton in yoghurt.

The chutneys

Do not leave the little earthen pots untouched. The onion chutney is spicy and tangy. The walnut chutney, doon chetin, is my all-time favourite thing on the whole trami.

How to eat Wazwan at a trami

Four people share one trami, each eating from their own quarter, and the four start and finish together. At a wedding you sit on the floor along a long cloth, the dastarkhwan, and the wazas keep adding portions to your trami as each course comes.

• Wait for the hand washing before you touch the rice.
• Eat from your own quarter of the trami.
• Pace yourself. The gushtaba comes last, and the eldest at the trami shares it out.
• Do not worry about leftovers. Guests once hid meat in bags to take home, which was thought shameful; hosts now hand out bags so nothing goes to waste (Asia Media Centre).
• At a restaurant, the same platter comes to your table for four, or by the plate (see the prices below).

What does a Wazwan cost in Srinagar?

Mughal Darbar's own menu lists a full Wazwan trami for four at ₹4,800, and single Wazwan dishes at ₹600 to ₹650 a plate. An online listing of the Ahdoos menu shows rista and gushtaba at ₹780 for a plate of four pieces. We read both on 25 October 2026; neither page shows a date.

For a sense of how prices move: in a May 2017 post, a food blogger reported paying ₹3,600 at Mughal Darbar for the platter for four, or ₹900 a plate. The listed trami today is about a third more.

Two people do not need a full trami. Three single dishes at Mughal Darbar's listed prices come to ₹1,800 to ₹1,950 before rice, which is a proper introduction. A full trami shared by four works out to ₹1,200 a head.

If you are budgeting a trip, give one Wazwan dinner its own line in your Kashmir trip cost: at about ₹1,200 a head, it costs what a meal at a premium restaurant does.

A family Wazwan cooked by a waza has no menu price. Its cost is the meat, the pran and the waza's team, and families plan it like the wedding itself: the Asia Media Centre reports that more than half the budget of such an occasion goes on the food.

Where to eat Wazwan in Srinagar

The two places I send friends to are Ahdoos and Mughal Darbar, both on Residency Road in the city centre. Both serve Wazwan by the plate as well as the full platter, so a couple can eat it without ordering for four.

Ahdoos, Residency Road

Ahdoos opened as a bakery on Residency Road in 1918 (WION's centenary piece, March 2018) and grew into the hotel and restaurant that stands there now, a short walk from Lal Chowk. Its Wazwan platter carries rogan josh, tabak maaz, rista and gushtaba (Curly Tales, 2022). The address listed online is Residency Road, Regal Chowk, with hours of 12 pm to 9:30 pm.

Mughal Darbar, Residency Road

Mughal Darbar gives its address as the ground floor, Residency Road, on its own website, which also lists its Wazwan dishes and the full trami. Many reviews spell it Mughal Durbar. A 2017 food blog mentions a board at the restaurant warning of knock-offs, so check the name and the address before you sit down.

Elsewhere

In Gulmarg, the Incredible India guide lists Cloves at The Khyber Himalayan Resort and Spa; in Srinagar it also names The Chinar at The LaLiT Grand Palace for a hotel-style Wazwan.

For more places to eat, see our guide to restaurants in Srinagar. For the old-city food I grew up on, masala tchot and noon chai with bakery patties, walk downtown Srinagar. And from November, the old city's other great mutton dish is harissa, a winter breakfast. The rest of the city is in our Srinagar guide.

Is there a vegetarian Wazwan?

Not a traditional one: Wazwan is a meat feast. But the waza's vegetable dishes are served alongside, and restaurants cook them to order: dum aloo, haakh (collard greens), paneer in tomato gravy, mushrooms, spinach and nadru, lotus stem, in yoghurt.

At Ahdoos, Curly Tales describes the vegetarian plate as dum aloo and haak with jeera rice and walnut chutney. Mughal Darbar's menu lists nadroo yakhni (lotus stem in yoghurt) and Kashmiri saag. For special occasions, Sahapedia notes, the wazas cook guchi, the prized morel mushrooms, in a milk and cream gravy.