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Which oil do restaurants use in India? What eleven Jaipur kitchens told us
Nobody publishes what Indian restaurants cook in, so we asked. Nine of eleven Jaipur kitchens on Harkara declared their oil on 18 October 2026: five olive oil, one cold-pressed groundnut, one refined rice bran, one "no palm oil", one no oil at all.
By Vidit Jain and Milind Raj, foundersAs declared
People type this question into Google every day, and the honest answer is that nobody knows for the country as a whole. No regulator publishes it, no delivery app asks it, and a menu never says. What is widely reported about commercial kitchens in India is that the usual choice is a refined oil bought in bulk, often palm oil or a blend, chosen on price and smoke point; we have not measured that and will not pretend to. What we can report is what the kitchens we work with say when asked directly, because every restaurant on Harkara answers seventeen questions about its kitchen, and the cooking medium is the first.
What the Jaipur kitchens declared
As of 18 October 2026, nine of the eleven live kitchens had answered the oil question. Each answer is the kitchen's own words, shown as declared; Harkara does not test or inspect.
| Kitchen | Area | Cooking oil, as declared |
|---|---|---|
| Nuroh | C-Scheme | Olive oil |
| Green Feast | C-Scheme | Olive oil |
| Green Feast | Raja Park | Olive oil |
| Red Coal | C-Scheme | Olive oil |
| Ciro Co | Lal Bahadur Nagar | Extra virgin olive oil |
| Tap The Roots | C-Scheme | Cold-pressed groundnut oil |
| Stack'D | Malviya Nagar | Refined rice bran oil |
| Oree Coffee & Kitchen | C-Scheme | No palm oil |
| Ratio | Lalkothi | No oil: the kitchen cooks without it |
| Midori, The Zen Bar | C-Scheme | Not yet answered |
| Cafe LazyMojo | Lal Bahadur Nagar | Not yet answered |
Five of nine say olive oil. One says groundnut, cold-pressed. One says rice bran, refined. One answers the question people are really asking, "is it palm oil?", with a plain no. And one, Ratio, says it does not cook in oil at all.
What the answers do and do not tell you
An answer is a declaration, not a test. It tells you what the kitchen says it buys and uses as its main cooking medium; it does not tell you what a particular dish was fried in on a particular evening, or whether the oil is reused. Reuse is its own question on Harkara, and the kitchens' answers to it are on each restaurant's page.
"Olive oil" also covers a range. Extra virgin is pressed and unrefined; "olive oil" or "pomace" is refined and cheaper, and behaves differently at frying heat. Only Ciro Co specifies extra virgin. The others say olive oil, and that is what we show.
Two kitchens have not answered. We show that as "not yet answered", never as a guess, because a blank is more useful to you than a number we made up.
How to find out for any restaurant
Ask. Most kitchens will tell you if you ask at the counter, and the ones that answer readily are usually the ones with nothing to hide. On Harkara the question is already asked for you: every restaurant's page shows its seventeen answers, and the cooking-oil guide lists the Jaipur kitchens under each answer, with the menu behind each.
Where the numbers come from
Kitchen answers are each restaurant's own, as declared to Harkara, read from the live data on 18 October 2026. The live guide updates as kitchens join or change an answer.
Where the numbers come from. Kitchen answers are each restaurant's own, shown as declared; Harkara does not test or inspect. Calories and macros are our estimates per serving, not lab values. How we know explains each kind of fact.
The live versions
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