Apple CEO Tim Cook was in India this month to launch Apple Store BKC and Apple Store Saket. On Monday (April 17), the day before the official opening of the BKC store, Cook was photographed having Vada Pav with Madhuri Dixit. The Bollywood actor never tagged the restaurant in her tweet, but she didn’t need to. The trademark black board in the backdrop revealed the location.
Can’t think of a better welcome to Mumbai than Vada Pav! pic.twitter.com/ZA7TuDfUrv— Madhuri Dixit Nene (@MadhuriDixit) April 17, 2023
Swati Snacks is an iconic vegetarian restaurant located in South Mumbai’s Tardeo neighbourhood. It counts among its patrons Mukesh Ambani who by his own admission has to have food from here at least once every week when in town. Others who have been regulars here include the artist MF Husain and tabla maestro Ustad Zakir Hussain. The reputation of Swati Snacks is such that you rarely get a table without a wait time of at least 30-45 minutes.
Who is the founder of Swati Snacks?
Meenakshi Jhaveri was a housewife who was known among friends and family for her chaat. As was wont, her well-wishers egged her on to start something of her own. After years convincing, Jhaveri agreed to start Swati Snacks.
When did Swati Snacks start?
When it started 60 years ago, in 1963, Swati Snacks served just ten items to four tables in a 110-sq-ft space. These included the standard pani puri, dahi batata puri, ragda pattice, and hand-churned ice cream.
The Jhaveris also claim to be first to serve fresh hand-churned sitafal ice-cream in the '60s, long before Sancha and certainly before Naturals was even born.
The effort that went into setting up Swati Snacks cannot be overstated. It helped that the Jhaveris employed a maharaj (the traditional Rajasthani cook is ubiquitous in South Mumbai homes) who helped Meenakshi with the cooking.
According to her daughter, Asha Jhaveri, Swati Snacks would open only in the evenings. This was because her mother and the maharaj would spend the morning actually making all the food. By all accounts, everything from the chutneys to the mixes, even the puris and the curd was made at home.
The two would then carry all of this to the restaurant by about 2 pm. At 4 pm, Swati Snacks would open for business.
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Who is Swati Snacks named after?
Funnily enough, after no one in particular. In one interview, Asha Jhaveri claimed that there was no Swati in their family and her mother just named it so because Swati had a familiar ring to it and would therefore have a good recall value.
One may never know if it was because of the name, its location (on a main thoroughfare just a stone’s throw from a large hospital), its quality of food or a combination of all three, but Swati Snacks soon became very popular indeed.
As the years passed, the popularity of the restaurant grew. Before long, the four tables weren’t able to accommodate the growing crowd so most people would simply eat off the trunk of their car. By the '80s Swati Snacks had grown. It now had a kitchen of its own and a much larger space.
What is the famous dish of Swati Snacks?
An outsider would find it confusing to see a Maharashtrian missal rubbing shoulders with Gujarati fada ni khichadi and Udipi rava masala dosa. But the menu of Swati Snacks is a curious assortment and a testament to the different cuisines of the city. It also includes veg dhansakh and rice as a hat-tip to the Parsi community, even though the average Parsi may roll their eyes at the vegetarian version of their meat-loaded dal.
Tim Cook may have eaten the vada pav, the quintessential Maharashtrian snack, but Swati Snacks is perhaps best known for panki.
The delicate rice pancake steamed in a banana leaf is, by all accounts, a family recipe. And, contrary to popular belief, it is a relatively recent addition to the menu, having been introduced to diners in 2000.
According to one account, it was the idea of Asha Jhaveri who would go from table to table urging people to try out this new dish. Over time, panki became so popular that people began associating it with Swati Snacks.
Today, panki headlines the single-page menu of Swati Snacks and is available in different flavours including pudina panki, suva (dill) panki and even a panki uttapam.
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Does Swati Snacks have branches?
As it turns out, yes! The second generation of Jhaveris has been running the show for several years now and has managed to expand the business beyond its flagship location in Tardeo.
Today, Swati Snacks has one other branch in South Mumbai’s business district of Nariman Point and a cloud kitchen in the western suburb of Juhu. Swati Snacks also has two branches in Ahmedabad.
Even though it serves quintessential comfort food, Swati Snacks has found itself on several awards lists including the 2021 Essence of Asia collection by Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants.
Just weeks before Covid-19 brought the world to a grinding halt, Swati Snacks had found recognition by Michelin star chefs Chefs Ravinder Bhogal of Jikoni in London and Prateek Sadhu of Masque fame. The two Indian-origin chefs named it among the places that make the best burgers in the world.
Even if that may have earned some chuckles and eye-rolling among Mumbaikars, the recognition put Swati Snacks on a global radar. So it wasn’t surprising that when Tim Cook had to be seen photographed as eating something in Mumbai, the good folks at Apple chose the vada pav and Swati Snacks.
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