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A new, vegetarian, branch of McDonald’s will open in Amritsar in 2013.

Amritsar is home to the Golden Temple, the holiest site of the Sikh faith, and the zone around it is vegetarian, in line with the belief that meat eating provokes feelings incompatible with spiritual pilgrimages.

Rajesh Kumar Maini, a spokesman for McDonald’s in northern India, told AFP: “There is a big opportunity for vegetarian restaurants as many Indians are vegetarian.

“At the moment, India is still a very small market – we just have 271 restaurants in India, and across the world, we have nearly 33,000.”

The hamburger giant has plans to open another vegetarian restaurant near the Vaishno Devi cave shrine in Jammu and Kashmir. The site in Katra is a sacred place to Hindus, the second-busiest pilgrimage spot in India.

McDonald’s signature dish in the country is the McAloo Tikki burger, which has a spiced potato-based filling.

Last year McDonald’s launched its McSpicy range: McSpicy Chicken Burger, McSpicy Paneer Burger, Big Spicy Chicken Wrap and Big Spicy Paneer Wrap.

 

McDonald’s opened its first Golden Arches restaurant in India in 1996 and beef has never featured on the menu. Instead, it serves chicken burgers and nuggets, lamb burgers and fish fillet burgers.

(Featured image: ShashiBellamkonda)

About the author

Oonagh ShielContent Manager at Cheapflights whose travel life can be best summed up as BC (before children) and PC (post children). We only travel during the school holidays so short-haul trips and staycations are our specialities!

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