Kumbakonam is a serious South Indian food town. Pure vegetarian Tamil cooking — dosais, idlis, rasam, sambhar, and the array of vegetable kootus — is what the local restaurants do best, and they do it as well as anywhere in the state.
Sri Mangalambika Vilas, on T S R Big Street near the Adi Kumbeswarar temple, is a long-standing favourite for breakfast tiffin: crisp dosais, soft idlis, and the celebrated Kumbakonam filter coffee served in a steel tumbler-dabarah. Vellai Lodge Café, in the heart of the old town, has been turning out simple meals for pilgrims for generations and is a good lunchtime choice for the standard banana-leaf thali. Hotel Raya's, near the bus stand, is one of the better mid-range South Indian restaurants in town.
For an evening meal in an air-conditioned setting, the restaurants attached to the larger lodges along Ayikulam Road and Nageswaran North Street offer the same vegetarian cuisine in a more comfortable environment. Meat eaters should know that genuinely good non-vegetarian restaurants are limited; Thanjavur, an hour away, has more.