A Kashmiri Restaurant that Turned 100 Under Tense Skies: Ahdoo’s

With the backdrop of a Bon Jovi quote, ‘There's a vintage which comes with age and experience’, let’s dive into the flavourful history of Srinagar’s famous vintage eatery — Ahdoo’s .

Hotel entrance from the main road (Source: Mister Tikku)

“If its walls could talk, the stories it would be able to tell!” tweets Omar Abdullah, Jammu & Kashmir’s former chief minister. The walls he speaks about belong to Ahdoo’s, a restaurant in Srinagar with a long-withstanding past of over a hundred years, which plans to expand to other parts of the country as well.

Established in 1918, Ahdoo’s is closely tied to Kashmir’s socio-political history. Historian and former BBC journalist, Andrew Whitehead, says that he has stayed at Ahdoo’s a dozen times at least. One such stay was in 1995, when he was in Kashmir to cover rising militancy in the state:

“It was the only hotel open”, Whitehead recalls. “The others had either shut down or been taken over by the Army. So, it was where all the visiting journalists, Indian and foreign, stayed.”

Similar experiences have been shared by other journalists, conflict zone reporters, editors, and news channel employees. Shujaat Bukhari, the editor-in-chief of Rising Kashmir, even mentioned that Ahdoo’s was nicknamed ‘mini-Press Club' in the early 1990s for the same reason. Yet its endurance isn’t the only reason this restaurant has been open for over a century. At times of crisis, like the Kashmir floods and the Covid pandemic, the restaurant did indeed shut its doors. Yet, decade after decade, Ahdoo’s continued to spring back, upholding the history embedded within it.

Ahdoo’s, it is believed, was set up at the behest of Maharaja Hari Singh, the last king of the erstwhile princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. In the 1910s, he suggested that Ahad, a member of his accounting team, send his son to a Calcutta confectionery managed by the East India Company. Here, he was to learn the art of baking. Then, in 1918, Haji Mohammad Sultan, Ahad's son, opened Ahdoo's, a tiny bakery which he named after his father.

Back then, it was the first Kashmiri bakery in Srinagar. During this time, the menu was limited to a few things — buttered toast, mutton, chicken kantis, or Kashmiri version of tikkas, a teapot of nun chai, and kebabs. But with the venture’s success by the 1920s, the bakery soon expanded into a restaurant and became the first in the Valley to offer the Kashmiri wazwan or traditional wedding feast.

The flexible menu of the restaurant allowed customers to design their own trami, a traditional copper plate, with a wide array of dishes like methi maaz, rista, gushtaba, mirchwangun korma, and mutch kebab. Ruwangun tchaman, or tomato paneer, is the lone exception here, with every other dish extolling some aspect of lamb. Preparation too can differ greatly based on the cooking techniques, additional spices, and flavourings used. The menu, since then, has only kept on growing.

Apart from the traditional fare the restaurant is famous for, it has expanded its menu to add Chinese and Italian food. Today, Ahdoo’s popularity, to some extent, depends on the people visiting Srinagar. Its long-standing legacy has made it a must-visit eatery which attracts tourists and food bloggers from across the country. Over the years, cricketers, politicians, bureaucrats, and film stars — from yesteryear icons like Rajendra Kumar to today’s superstars like Alia Bhatt and Varun Dhawan — have all visited Ahdoo’s. It has even been featured in Arundhati Roy’s award-winning book, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.

Since its early days, Ahdoo’s has come a long way. Its success has even encouraged the owners to expand the eatery to a hotel. To stand the test of time, Ahdoo’s has rebranded its bakery and revamped its ambience to appeal to a contemporary crowd. Now, they are ready to expand into the country’s metropolises, showing, as always, no sign of stopping anytime soon.