Make sure to also check out my Ahmedabad city guide!
Ahmedabad has a lot of great food, and it’s easier to get good quality Gujarati food here than it is to get good quality local food in most of the country. I love Gujarati food and I’ll come out swinging and say that if you think you don’t like Gujarati food because it’s too sweet (a complaint I've heard often), you’ve probably never had good Gujarati food. The Gujarati thali restaurants in Mumbai are mostly not that good! You won't struggle to eat well in Ahmedabad, whether you are looking for a full thali meal or for street food and snacks. The sections are broken up accordingly.
Thali Restaurants
Unfortunately, much of the Gujarati food in Ahmedabad is in the form of gargantuan thalis which I honestly don’t enjoy eating that much. I love thalis with a few different sabzis, a dal, a salad, a side, some chutneys, etc, but these thali restaurants assault you with like 45 different things and I find it overkill, it’s impossible to have more than a single bite of everything without excessively stuffing yourself, and consequently it’s hard to properly appreciate anything. I don’t enjoy overeating, and even though many of you psychos apparently do, it still seems better to focus on appreciating a few things. I wish there were more “basic” thali restaurants around.
Anyway, one of these massive thalis on a trip to Ahmedabad is okay, and I’ve got multiple recommendations for them if you want more, as well as a few simpler thalis. Then I’ll get to street food and snacks.
To start, I’ll list my favorite restaurant in Ahmedabad, and one of my favorites in the country: Kamla. The one I went to is in Bodakdev in west Ahmedabad, where probably most visitors won't go, but highly recommended if you’re in the neighborhood and possibly worth a detour, depending on how much time you have. Thankfully there's a newer, more centrally located branch in Navrangpura (and another new branch that's even further out), though I didn't go to that one. It would not be wrong to eat the majority of yours meals at Kamla, with one meal reserved for a more elaborate thali and one or two meals reserved for snacks. I luckily stayed nearby the Bodakdev location and went…10 times? To me it’s the perfect restaurant: just good quality, homestyle local thalis, 175 inr per thali, no refills. It’s “small” in the sense that there’s "only" three dishes and a salad, plus chaas and a sweet, rather than a food orgy like most of the thali places. To me, the "humble" thali is preferable, but it was still a ton of food, more than I could typically finish, and my wife and I actually shared the thali on a few occasions. The menu changes per meal, check their Instagram stories for the day’s menu (they forget to post sometimes, but they probably post it five days a week). It’s 80% Gujarati, but sometimes they switch it up, so don’t go if dinner is pao bhaji or whatever. Sometimes it’s fairly basic (various preparations of dal, potato sabzi, kadhi), but many of the meals were more unique, with local seasonal bean dishes, different muthia nu shaaks, and I even got a pre-season undhiyu once (they called it “almost undhiyu, without every single vegetable in season yet). It was on occasion more oily than I prefer, but still much better than most restaurants, and the majority of the preparations weren't very oily. They also have breakfast and some snacks outside of meal hours. We got handvo once, and they have dhokla and a few other Gujarati snacks, I’m sure you can’t go wrong here. Lots of people get dosa but remember you are in Gujarat, try to imagine me peering over your shoulder and judging you while you are ordering. They also have a small selection of organic produce at good prices, though the veggies were sometimes fairly beat up looking. It was a good place to buy tomatoes and dragon fruit. They also have some local crafts and sweets and snacks, though I never tried them. If you go there over and over like I do and want something to read while you’re there, here’s a good piece on the restaurant’s namesake Kamla Chowdhry, who was important in the development of IIM Ahmedabad and played a role in the Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA), which is the restaurant’s parent organization. The Bodakdev branch also has a lot of character, in an earthy, airy outdoor location. I miss going there.
My other favorite restaurant was, the obvious pick, Agashiye, the thali restaurant at House of MG. It’s a massive thali, the kind I said above that I’m not fond of, and it’s not cheap at all (around 1500 per person I think). But it’s excellent! Again proper homestyle food, like a celebratory feast dining with the nobility, plenty of unique dishes. Even stuff that sounded bad, like the corn samosa, was amazing. I’d say if you have only one meal in Ahmedabad, make it this. Try not to eat too much. For fun, here’s the menu when Shinzo Abe ate there with Modi. And here are some recipe videos. House of MG also has their cafe The Green House which has a good range of options for a lighter meal, and it’s the perfect place for lunch when exploring the old city. You can order a la carte or get one of their more normal sized thalis. They have a mini-version of the Agashiye thali (a good option if you want more Agashiye food but can’t fathom doing a round two of the full thing, I got it once here and ordered it home once) as well as a lighter, healthier thali that is less Gujarati. They also have the full range of Gujarati snacks. I wanted to eat healthy here once so I got a salad but it was excessively mustardy and saucy, very much an Indian salad. You’re better off with their healthy thali (the thalis are shareable, too). This is one of the only restaurants anywhere in the world where I recommend ordering beverages, their sharbats were great! This is saying a lot coming from me. Get the house special with coconut, ginger, and lemon.
Another big thali restaurant I recommend is Vishalla, which before going I thought would be a touristy/gimmicky village themed restaurant, which I guess it is, but the food is also great. It felt homestyle to me (just way too much food), and the restaurant is a ton of fun with the setting and the performances that are included in the meal. The utensils museum (an extra cost, I don’t remember how much, on an already semi-expensive meal, in total I think we paid over 1k per person) is also great, also in a great setting. Overall the experience felt like a nice, authentic representation of Indian culture and heritage rather than something over the top, gimmicky, and contrived.
I did one other big thali meal at a place called Annakut and I really enjoyed the food, but compared to the above restaurants it did not feel as homestyle to me, and it was sweeter. But still, probably better than any Gujarati thali restaurant in Mumbai. There are many other famous ones in Ahmedabad that have their big fans but I could only try so many. As a fan of ITC restaurants I planned to eat at Royal Vega for my final meal in the city, but had to scrap that as I got sick in my final days. I hope to go next time, though. One restaurant I went to that disappointed me was Karma Cafe, run by the Navajivan Trust, the food was overly oily and generic. Gandhi wouldn’t approve. I liked a few Kathiawadi places I tried (Gramin Bhojanalaya and Kathiyawad Food), but I also found the food to be too oily, which is maybe just the cuisine? I also find the dishes on offer to be a bit too basic for my tastes, I love the eggplant but after that it’s just dal, potato, kadhi, and and sev bhaji, the silliest dish ever, why would you fry something and then make it soggy? I say save your Kathiawadi food for a trip to the region.
Breakfast/Snacks/Street Food
Gujarat of course has a big culture of breakfast and snacks. I have recommendations for some great places to get the full spread, but in general I thought the quality from every farsan place I tried was good as I popped into random neighborhood places that seemed clean and popular or had a lot of google reviews. I usually just asked for a mixed plate of things. I only had the fried stuff a few times from the more famous places, but I had many breakfasts/snacks of the steamed dishes from farsan shops. Good, cheap, and I think pretty healthy (some of it can be on the sweet side, and some a bit oily, but mostly I felt it was good, there’s a lot of besan). As for the unhealthy stuff, I think most fried foods and sweet foods in general are overrated and rarely worth eating, but the jalebi/fafda (or gathiya or whatever, pick your poison) in Ahmedabad is an A++ combo, and these are the best jalebis I’ve ever had, tangier and less sweet than most jalebis, which I often find to be inedible. A few places give you the option to pay extra to fry the jalebis in ghee (or ghee is the exclusive option) and the savories in groundnut oil instead of refined oil, I wish this were more universal rather than the race to the bottom costwise that too many of India’s commercially available local foods suffer from. It’s also a lot of fun watching them make fresh fafda and gathiya. I really like the papaya salad thing and the yellow chutney they give as well.
In the old city, I highly recommend Chandravilas, an institution which is perhaps the city’s oldest restaurant still standing. You can get a massive mixed plate with everything on it. Amazing jalebi/fafda, and most of everything else is very good too. I would recommend it for the food and the history! Another excellent place for jalebi/fafda/gathiya and everything else is Laxmi Ganthiya Rath in west Ahmedabad, overall I’d rank it on par with Chandravilas, with maybe a few dishes being better at one or the other place. I also had great jalebi/gathiya at Iscon Gathiya on the SG highway. Just go wherever is nearby.
That’s it for jalebi/fafda/gathiya that I had. But like I said farsan places in general were satisfying for snacks. Most of the ones I went to were just random little neighborhood places that seemed clean. Look out for the chain Das Khaman, which has its signature sev khamani, which is great (a friend also swears by their butter garlic tam tam, but I didn’t try it). If you need a quick snack while visiting the sites in Shahibaug (Calico museum, Sardar Patel Museum, etc), I had a nice farsan breakfast at Shreeji Khaman House.
I also highly recommend going to Swati Snacks, where you can have Gujarati snacks and some bigger dishes in a clean, air conditioned environment. I’ve been a dozen or so times in Mumbai and once at the Law Garden location in Ahmedabad (there's another branch in the city as well). It’s top notch and I recommend it, though I wouldn’t prioritize it for meals over the other places I mentioned above. They do have a lunch thali, but the sabzis of the day aren’t always Gujarati (the day I went it was a paneer dish). However, they have snacks that are hard to find elsewhere, like panki, khichu, handvo, etc, so prioritize those over more typical snacks. You might get lucky with some seasonal special meals, like guava curry, mango curry, or undhiyu. Everything there is good though. It’s best with a group as the snack portions are fairly large, which is why I prefer the farsan shops where I can get a small mixed plate. The one time I went for 4pm snacks at Swati I ruined my appetite for dinner. For the snacks, The Green House also has a similar menu.
If you like Irani cafes, New Irani in the old city is nice. Not as unique/distinctive as the above mentioned Gujarati foods, so I wouldn’t prioritize it, but I had good bun maska, anda bhurji, and chaas breakfast with some nice old world atmosphere.
As for street foods, Ahmedabad has a big street food culture, but I hardly had any, it mostly looked bad to me, too junk food-ish and not traditional enough. Heavily processed white bread, processed cheese, and ketchup seem to play starring roles. Conde Nast Indiahas a good series where they have local food writers or industry people pick their favorite street foods in different cities, and I usually recommend them, but in the one for Ahmedabad I hardly wanted to eat anything. It mostly all looks like gross carnival food for teenagers. Sorry everyone. I went to Manek Chowk, the famous late night street food destination, and the only thing that appealed to me was the jamun shot.
That said, I did have some street food stuff which I really liked and can modestly recommend, depending on your interest in such things. I wouldn’t prioritize these over all of the Gujarati foods mentioned above, partly because they are mostly unhealthy, unhygienic, and not as unique, but they are still mostly specific to Ahmedabad/Gujarat, if not conceptually then in their spice palettes.
There is a neighborhood called Navtaad which has a line of shops serving small, crispy samosas called Navtaad Samosas. I went to one called Darbar Samosa and got a range of samosas with interesting stuffings, some of them very Gujarati with the sweet/savory balance, those were awesome, and the chutney was interesting too, it may have had wood apple in it but I haven’t confirmed that (as a huge wood apple fan, the maybe is good enough for me). I liked the stuffings more than the very crispy samosa shell, but then I’m not so into fried foods. Recommended! They also sell them unfried, so you can fry them at home, I wonder if it’s possible to bake them or if they’d fall apart.
The very popular local poha chain Gajanand Pauva was great, among the best pohas I’ve ever had (by which I mean among the few pohas I’ve ever had that was actually any good and not a dry, unidimensionally flavored empty carbfest). Open 24 hours, I believe. They have many poha varieties, I think I got the peanut poha, I suspect they are all good except the ones labeled “special” as those have cheese. My wife liked it so much she wanted to go back to try another variety, but we never got around to it.
Karnavati Dabeli Center was great, but probably not worth the drive to Isanpur. This was the only dabeli I had after doing a lot of research to attempt to find the best one, but there are lots of others that get recommended.
The most interesting street food I had was an unripe papaya salad/chaat/namkeen thing from a stall called Sashi Chavanu around the corner from Lucky Restaurant. Gujarati som tam! They mix chavanu (I think this is the Gujarati word for namkeen) with a papaya salad like the ones served at thali restaurants and farsan shops (I think they consider it a chutney). At first it was too salty for me, but I had them add more papaya until it balanced the flavors better. Very good, but should you feel safe eating papaya salad off the street?
Speaking of chavanu, I had a place saved called Juna Share Bazar Chavanawala saved but I never went, nor did I ever make it to the famous Induben Khakhrawala.
A friend highly recommended Jasuben’s Old Pizza. I couldn’t bring myself to try it. Maybe next time. I feel like I need to go with someone who has enthusiasm, and that enthusiasm may rub off on me and I’ll enjoy it. Maybe not though. I also wanted to try one of the locally famous vada pav places, like Shreeji, but never worked up the enthusiasm, though I suspect it’s good (I saw people complain they put too much butter, but butter is good, I don’t see it as a desecration the way I see the addition of cheese to be). I was planning to go to the original RK Egg Eatery near NID but never made it down there.
Other
I mostly covered everything, but there are a few miscellaneous food items of note, some of which are of more value to people staying longer term.
I don’t think there’s a single “chef-driven” restaurant in the city, or any place doing anything “interesting,” which is why I say stick to Gujarati food here. I did find it amusing that I saw more Mexican food here than in other parts of India. A lot of foreign-returns or people with family in the US, I guess!
Ahmedabadi’s seem to have bad taste in some things but good taste in others. I wouldn’t recommend these to someone here on a brief trip since they should stick to the Gujarati stuff, but the chole from 1944 The Hocco Kitchen chain (formerly Havmor) was top notch, and I really enjoyed the local favorite pao bhaji from the chain Honest, which had cashews and raisins in it. I got these at a Bohra wedding I attended where they very kindly ordered vegetarian food for the few soyboy betas like me, I wouldn’t have tried these otherwise but I’m glad I did and they were a special treat! I’m tempted to eat at both restaurants on future visits.
One restaurant that looked really good to me was Project Otenga, which does northeastern food with some modern touches, and they also have cool events. It seems like it could be a nice space to work as well. I planned to go but didn’t get around to it.
I got excellent cheese from Panchal Dairy. Some of the best in India!
I got good whole wheat sourdough from Lily Pond Bakery. Message them on Instagram.
I got a lot of stuff from the organic grocery store Sose. Good healthy(ish) chivda, khakras, muesli, stuff like that. In general reasonably priced for organic stores. I liked the soaps too.
I went to the one and only brewhouse of Ahmedabad… Scoby’s, serving up mugs of homemade kombucha! Fun, though I suppose since it’s a “brewery” in India they feel obliged to play bad, loud rap music. I would have liked more of a chill cafe vibe.
Ahmedabad has a bean to bar chocolate maker Toska! They have a really nice cafe, and I enjoyed their chocolate. The selection is a bit odd for serious chocosseurs, I don’t want to harp too much here but there’s not a lot on the darker side, there are a handful of single origins but they mostly aren’t from India and they are mostly not very dark, there was an 80% India single origin but it was sweetened with an artificial sweetener, almost all of the chocolates had good, real ingredients but “natural flavors” popped up a few times, stuff like that. But still, I really liked everything I tried (I did find them to be a bit brittle but maybe it’s because of how I stored them). There were some nice flavors like fig and rosemary, the chai bar is great and more vibrantly spiced than most chai bars I’ve had, and I like the coffee bar with no cacao, just coffee, cacao butter, and sugar. They also have a fun thing where you can make your own bar and put whatever inclusions you want. I will definitely return on a next trip. I didn’t get any of their desserts, but they looked good. The salad I got was okay, very much an Indian salad, but the food here looked better than most of the cafes in town, and it’s a very pretty space that has a local feel to it, rather than the generic environs of most nice cafes.
The only local sweet shop I went to was Kandoi Bhogilal Mulchand, the original outlet in the old city. It’s a local favorite and I believe they use ghee and real ingredients rather than flavors for their sweets, so it’s a good place to buy sweets, if that’s your thing (you should know by now that it’s not mine). Their speciality is mohanthal, though you’ll probably get that in some of your thalis as well (we had it at Agashiye, warm and full of ghee). I’m not sure what else they have that’s unique to Gujarat (though I can’t say mohanthal is all that unique taste wise…). They also have matho, which I believe is just another word for shrikhand, which they keep in the freezer, but I didn’t get to try it.
I did try frozen matho/shrikhand from the local cheese shop Casaro. It was awesome! Kind of like frozen yogurt. They have many good real fruit flavors like lychee, guava, and jamun, and my favorite was possibly the chili/coriander/pomegranate flavor. I went for the cheese, which was decent, but the matho was special stuff.
Gujarat eats the most ice cream per capita of anywhere in India, and Ahmedabad has a good culture of real fruit flavored ice creams. Niruben's Natural and Home-made Ice Cream is a fun experience, based out of an old lady’s home, and I think her brother opened a competing place next door. She said that they use essence/color for a few flavors like vanilla and rose, but otherwise all of the fruit flavors have no additives, so get those! Shankar’s Ice Cream Factory and Scoops by Shalli were also good, and the branch of Shankar’s we went to on Ramdas Road had two machines where they do freshly churned ice creams. Of course get those. That said, none of the places here offered very out there flavors, it’s mostly stuff you can get at Natural’s, not that there’s anything wrong with that. I was hoping for some weird Gujarati flavors though, like chaas or bhakarwadi or something. Nobody here ripped off Tresind’s khandvi ice cream yet.
I should also point out that Ahmedabad, particularly the old city, has a great culture of Muslim food, which perhaps does not get enough promotion. There’s a kebab street, a meat samosa shop that I drove by a handful of times and was always packed, and certainly much more. I also drove by a fancy looking Bohra restaurant in west Ahmedabad. Here is one article on the city’s non-veg food, google around for more. In Vir Sanghvi’s article about a trip to Ahmedabad a few years ago, he wrote: “food places in the city’s Muslim areas are finally attracting a multi-religion crowd. (i.e.: Hindu and Jain Gujaratis are going there.) In fact, he said, it was now a big deal to get parties catered by Muslim establishments from the old city. This is a welcome development in a city that has had an unhappy communal history. And the traditional Muslim restaurants have created vegetarian versions of their most famous dishes to reach across the religious divide.” This is nice to hear! Though in my quick searches for Muslim restaurants serving vegetarian dishes I didn’t find anything, if someone has any info let me know!
I hear rumors that “cheese butter masala” is a popular dish in Ahmedabad, replacing paneer in the classic overrated mediocre restaurant dish with Amul cheese. However, this is a classy blog, and I will speak no further of such vulgarities.
Cafes To Work From
I don’t always write about cafes but in non-obvious digital nomad spots like Ahmedabad I feel I should help people find some good spots to work from. I had a nice time working from Roastery Culture and Toska, both were quiet, comfortable, and had good wifi. Kaffa was nice but too busy and didn’t give wifi, same with Project Cafe. Mleko gave wifi and had the best food of all these places (in general in Ahemabad the cafe food was… behind the times, to put it kindly) and I liked the space, but it was very busy when I went. I didn’t work from Mitti, but they have wifi and said we can work from there, and it’s a nice place (we went for a modern Indian chef’s tasting menu that they do on weekends, which was just okay and not worth doing, but it was by no means bad and I think the cafe food should be among the best in the city and the desserts looked very good and they seem to use good ingredients). A few other pretty good places to work were Zen, Sip of Hope, and OCD Culture. If I recall correctly, all of the places I mentioned had good iced lattes, except for Zen and Project which were lackluster. We wanted to work from Wagh Bakri Tea Lounge and Project Otenga but never got around to them.
Comentarios