A restaurant that attracts customers with its vast spread of free salads, pickles, and condiments
Gujarat’s Shree Khodiyar Kathiyawadi Dhaba (SKKD) chain of unique vegetarian restaurants
After two visits to Shree Khodiyar Kathiyawadi Dhaba’s restaurants in Gujarat, I found them a local adaptation of foreign salad bar restaurants but a wholly Indian interpretation. While foreign salad bars have a cover charge for the customer to sample their spread, SKKD allows its patrons to eat free any quantity of their salad, pickles, and condiments on the table.
Customers invariably order menu items at SKKD, keeping the restaurant coffers running despite the generous free spread on each table and the free after mint they offer customers post meals on their way out of the restaurant.
We first went to an SKKD restaurant in August 2021 during a visit to the Statue of Unity at Kevadiya. Asking our local contact Hirenbhai for a Gujarati meal place when we visited nearby Bharuch, we got his recommendation of SKKD as a very popular vegetarian restaurant. On checking Google Maps for directions to reach that restaurant while at Bharuch, we found it had more than 3676 ratings averaging 4.2, showing its popularity.
During our visit to the Bharuch SKKD restaurant, we found it had green, white and orange balloons all over, after a recent Indian Independence Day celebration on August 15, and posters of Krishna Janmashtami, which was the day after our visit.
SKKD waiters wear a black uniform with an apron-like flap in the front. They also wear facemasks with SKKD logos and politely help customers. SKKD’s corporate colors are black and red, which you see them use in uniforms, décor, and other objects at their restaurants.
KKD’s unique offerings are its salad-pickle-condiment combination. They serve nine pickles in small square steel containers inside a steel box with a lid on each table. The waiters open the lid of the pickle box after customers sit at a table so that the pickles retain their freshness. Each table also has two pickles in ceramic containers and four condiments, including salt, pepper, buttermilk masala, and masala for salads. In addition, SKKD tables also have steel containers with jaggery and peanuts for customers to eat at their meal.
Each SKKD restaurant also serves three salad platters of six salads each to offer thirty-six pickles, salad, and condiments to customers if you add the spring onion in the water they have at each table. Customers are free to use any number and quantity of pickles, salads, and condiments at their table. Though SKKD offers customers its free offerings, the restaurant chain is popular through its large dining space, signboards, great service, and reasonable prices.
SKKD’s menu is like at any restaurant in Gujarat with starters, main dishes, rotis, and rice dishes. Their dishes are oily but not too spicy. They serve buttermilk, which is common at Gujarati restaurants. They have some atypical dishes like sizzler but adapted to local tastes in Gujarat, where they have their restaurants.
As you finish your meal at SKKD, you will find a waiter with a tray full of sweets, let customers choose one or more. Offering a sweet platter to patrons is a common practice at restaurants in Gujarat which SKKD follows. However, SKKD patrons are usually too full to look at the sweet platter, which has some sweet pizza variants apart from regular Gujarati sweets.
SKKD does not serve thalis but only a la carte dishes. They even have Sunday specials. They are a worthy tourist destination at Bharuch that will satiate your hunger and give you a taste of Gujarati cuisine.
At their Bharuch outlet, we saw their owner Bakulbhai Thakkar when he was giving an interview to a TV crew during our visit. Bakulbhai started as a waiter at a restaurant, where he graduated in cooking and then managing the restaurant before starting SKKD, which now has sixteen branches across Gujarat. He interacted humbly with his interviewers and even fished out a gamcha (towel) to use on his shoulder when talking on video. So, to experience a unique Indian vegetarian restaurant that a person without a hotel management degree started, you must head to the nearest SKKD outlet.
Bakulbhai operates the SKKD chain with his wife, Jyotsanaben, and his son, Sunny.
After you finish your meal, you can partake of the free mouth freshener range near their cash counter on your way out. That apart, you also find that SKKD has a table full of some more goodies, which SKKD says make diners nostalgic for childhood. Those goodies include preserved gooseberries, tamarind, candy, sunflower, another seed, and roasted mud chunks (common in Gujarat as a digestive).
SKKD is India’s local version of the salad bar you see in other countries. However, the free offer of 36 pickles, salads, and condiments is unique to SKKD.
Their two well-known outlets are those at Bharuch and Pal, near Surat. SKKD also hosts birthday parties like MNC fast food chains and has a loyalty card. At Surat, they also take online orders.
We have also visited SKKD’s Chikhali restaurant on NH 48, about 200 kilometers from Rustomjee Urbania. The nearest SKKD outlet for Urbania residents is their Vapi restaurant, about 150 kilometers and a three-hour drive by car.
SKKD is a Gujarat-based chain with numerous restaurants in the southern part of the state. Visit them if you are in Gujarat sometime.
SKKD is a no-frills restaurant where the food takes precedence. The owners retain patrons through great service and a lavish spread to attract their target customer segment, the local population at their Gujarat locations. SKKD is not a gourmet restaurant but offers traditional food that resembles home-cooked dishes in a friendly and noisy atmosphere. So you see large groups of diners, including families and friends, come and spend a few hours dining at SKKD. The pricing is modest though the restaurant chain has air conditioning and good interiors. That may be because of their origin from the city of Bharuch, a tier III city north of Surat.
Thanks for the share. Tempted to visit as we cross the area
Thanks for information.