Best Restaurants in Vadodara (2026)

TL;DR 🍽️

• Vadodara's restaurant scene stretches from South Indian thali counters to dedicated Kerala kitchens and multi-cuisine formats 🗺️
• The city has an unexpectedly strong Kerala food presence — a striking feature for a city rooted in Gujarati culinary tradition 🥥
• Several restaurants operate split lunch-and-dinner sittings with a gap in between; knowing the hours matters before heading out 🕐
• A few spots are evening-only operations — primarily dinner from 6:30pm or 7pm onward 🌙
• Taste of Kerala is currently listed as temporarily closed — confirm its status before planning a visit 📋

Vadodara's Dining Map: More Range Than Expected

Vadodara is better known for its Gujarati food traditions — dhokla, fafda, thepla, the Jain-influenced vegetarian kitchens that have shaped the city's culinary identity for generations — than for the diversity of its restaurant scene. A closer look at the city's current options tells a more varied story. South Indian kitchens, Kerala specialists, and multi-cuisine operations now coexist alongside the expected North Indian and local formats.

Madras Bhavan is one of the city's established South Indian options, serving the kind of food — dosas, idlis, vadas, South Indian thalis — that has found a loyal audience well beyond the South Indian community in Gujarat. South Indian cooking has crossed the geographic and cultural distance to become part of how Vadodara eats, and Madras Bhavan has been part of that normalisation for long enough to have built real regulars.

22nd Parallel at Shukan Ananta, near Muktanand Circle, covers similar culinary territory with a consistent seven-day service: noon to 3pm for lunch, 7pm to 11pm for dinner. The format is clean and the hours straightforward for anyone planning around a split-sitting model. It is a reliable South Indian option in a part of the city — near Muktanand Circle — that has good transport access.

Delhi Express on Old Padra Road brings North Indian cooking to a city that already has strong Gujarati options but can absorb more North Indian kitchens without oversaturation. The address on Old Padra Road places it in an area that has developed into a useful cluster of non-Gujarati dining options.

The Kerala Presence in Vadodara

The most distinctive feature of Vadodara's current restaurant landscape is the number of dedicated Kerala cuisine operations. In a city associated with Jain and Gujarati food traditions, finding multiple kitchens serving fish curries, appam, puttu, and coconut-based gravies is genuinely unexpected — and worth understanding.

The explanation is demographic. Vadodara has a significant population of residents from Kerala working in the city's industrial and educational sectors. That community creates consistent, year-round demand for home-region cuisine, which has attracted multiple dedicated kitchens rather than just the occasional Kerala dish tacked onto a broader menu.

Banana Leaf Restaurant (Kerala Restaurant) at Sapphire Complex, Old Padra Road, near tube company, Anupam Nagar, operates Tuesday through Sunday: lunch from 9am to 3pm and dinner from 6pm to 10pm (Monday closed). It is one of the more established Kerala kitchens in the city. The name signals exactly what the kitchen is doing — no hedging toward a pan-Indian format.

Malayalee Kada at Shop no.18, Sainath Avenue, near Emperor Building, operates primarily as an evening destination. Weekdays open from 6:30pm to 11pm; Sunday adds an afternoon window from 1pm to 3:30pm and resumes at 6:30pm; Saturday opens at 7pm. The word "kada" — meaning shop or stall in Malayalam — suggests the informal, regular-customer format common in Kerala itself, transposed to Vadodara with its own community of regulars.

Priya's Kitchen Authentic KERALA Veg-Non Veg Homemade food at C30, opposite Maruti Wood Art, brings home-cooking ambition to the restaurant format. The hours are split across the week (lunch at 12:30pm, dinner from 6pm, with slight variations by day), suggesting a small operation built around precision and regularity rather than volume. It is the kind of kitchen that rewards repeat visits.

Taste of Kerala, listed near bridge road, is currently noted as temporarily closed. The hours listed — 9am to 11pm daily — suggest an ambitious operating window when open, but given the temporary closure, verifying status directly before any planned visit is strongly recommended.

Broader Options: International and Multi-Cuisine

Not every Vadodara diner is looking for a regional South Indian kitchen. Spice Kraft at FF 106-107, Golden Icon Chakli Circle addresses that appetite directly. A multi-cuisine format covering international, Thai, and Mexican cooking in a city where these options are still unevenly distributed serves a specific need: diners who want variety beyond the subcontinent. It is one of the more distinctive options on the current Vadodara restaurant map precisely because it doesn't fit the expected category.

white house panjabi khana on Indrapuri Road offers a Chinese and Indian combination. The Punjabi-Chinese pairing has become its own distinct culinary idiom across Indian cities — not quite Chinese, not quite Punjabi, but recognisably its own thing — and white house panjabi khana works within that tradition for Vadodara's appetite for the format.

Insider Tip: For the Kerala restaurants in particular — Banana Leaf Restaurant (Kerala Restaurant), Malayalee Kada, and Priya's Kitchen Authentic KERALA Veg-Non Veg Homemade food — calling ahead is worth the effort even when hours are published. These are generally smaller operations with limited seatings and kitchen quantities that run out. Arriving without a sense of table availability can mean a wait or a missed meal, especially on weekend evenings.

FAQ

Why are there so many Kerala restaurants in Vadodara? Vadodara has a sizeable community of Kerala residents working in the city's industrial and educational sectors. That community creates consistent demand for home-region cuisine, which has supported multiple dedicated kitchens rather than just token menu items.

Which Vadodara restaurants are open for lunch? Banana Leaf Restaurant (Kerala Restaurant), 22nd Parallel, and Priya's Kitchen Authentic KERALA Veg-Non Veg Homemade food all serve lunch. Madras Bhavan also runs daytime service. Malayalee Kada and Spice Kraft are more oriented toward dinner.

Is Taste of Kerala currently operating? As of current listings, Taste of Kerala is marked as temporarily closed. Verify its status directly before planning a visit.

Does Vadodara have purely vegetarian options? Several restaurants lean heavily vegetarian, particularly Madras Bhavan and 22nd Parallel given their South Indian menus. The city's strong Jain and Gujarati food culture means most kitchens — even those serving meat — carry substantial vegetarian sections.

What part of Vadodara has the most dining variety? Old Padra Road has emerged as a useful cluster, with Banana Leaf Restaurant (Kerala Restaurant) and Delhi Express both located there. The area near Muktanand Circle (22nd Parallel) is also worth noting for South Indian options.

Bottom Line

Vadodara's restaurant scene has more depth than the city's Gujarati identity might suggest. The concentration of Kerala cuisine — Banana Leaf Restaurant (Kerala Restaurant), Malayalee Kada, and Priya's Kitchen Authentic KERALA Veg-Non Veg Homemade food among them — reflects how Vadodara's population and appetites have shifted. Alongside established South Indian kitchens like Madras Bhavan and multi-cuisine options like Spice Kraft, the dining map rewards exploration across the city's different neighborhoods and formats.