Lucky Restaurant

Iranian-style cafe built around a Muslim graveyard

Address Lal Darwaja

Lucky is the famous Lal Darwaja cafe where you eat your bun-and-tea with twelve medieval Muslim graves in the middle of the room. The food is unremarkable Iranian-Indian cafe fare: tea, paneer keema, akoori scrambled eggs, soft white buns. The reason to come is the atmosphere — a small, cluttered cafe with old photographs, a 1960s air-conditioner, and the painted graves under glass-topped tables.

A small M.F. Husain mural in the back room is owner Krishanan's prized possession, painted in the 1990s when the artist used the cafe as his Ahmedabad office.

eating out restaurant cafe
A story
When the owner built a tea shop at Lal Darwaja in the 1950s he found that the site contained twelve unmarked tombs of medieval Muslim travellers. Rather than move them, he built tables and a counter around the graves and painted them sky-blue. M.F. Husain ate breakfast here so often that he left a wall mural behind, still on display. The graves are still part of the dining room and are tended daily.