Khasi food is the headline cuisine: pork-heavy, lightly spiced compared to the rest of India, and built around fermented soybeans, black sesame, and rice. The traditional dish is jadoh, rice cooked in pork blood and offal — order it at any of the stalls inside Bara Bazaar or, for a cleaner version, at City Hut Family Dhaba. Dohjem (intestine stew) and tungrymbai (fermented soybean paste) round out the canon.
Beyond Khasi food, Shillong has good Chinese (the Chinese community here is one of India's oldest) and decent steakhouses around Police Bazar. Don't miss smoked pork with rice and the local rice beer ka kiad — sold at unmarked roadside huts on the road out of town.