Viveck Patil, Ketan Trivedi and Chintan Shah were novices to the restaurant industry when they started a kiosk called So South in October 2012 on Ahmedabad’s Sarkhej Gandhinagar Highway (SG Road). Today, they own café-style restaurants in Ahmedabad, Vadodara and Rajkot, with one opening shortly in Surat.
The friendship of the trio dates back to their student days. “We were good friends since our college days in Vadodara. As we have a good rapport, we decided to move away from our initial business of selling insurance to start our own venture together. The idea of stepping into food service industry came up as we loved eating out, specially streetfood.
Our favourite was the dosas on the Surat streetside, made on a traditional charcoal stove called ‘chulah’ and we felt that it could get a market in Ahmedabad. Thus, we started a kiosk offering dosas cooked on the chulah stove. When that began to work, we invested in starting a café called So South in Ahmedabad’s upmarket Vastrapur neighbourhood in June 2013.”
While running their kiosk, they realised that people in Gujarat were asking for variants of the traditional dosa. “This south Indian specialty is a fermented rice crepe but we came up with a crepe made from unfermented batter as we found that a significant percentage of our patrons were not used to the flavour of fermented rice.
This was offered in various shapes and textures and with this crepe we offered around 25 types of dosas from the traditional ones found in the southern states of India to the jinni dosa that is a favourite street food in Mumbai and other dosas that are popular in western India,” says Trivedi, adding, “the response was good. We then decided to experiment with different fillings and dips from different cuisines.”
They introduced corn capsicum and cheese chilly dosas, which worked well and the menu was also divided into different sections. ‘Dosai with Dip’ is their selection of dosas shaped like tortilla chips served with cheese, peri peri, sundried tomato, shezwan and other dips. Another specialty is cone-shaped dosas which comes with dry fillings like corn, mushroom and soya.
For those who want different flavours, there is crispy crepes made from batter with ingredients like coffee, garlic, coriander, mint, roasted garlic etc. The stuffed dosas come with their signature fillings like cheese chilly cabbage, mushroom and corn, chilly paneer, aloo paneer and there is an option to make one’s own combination of fillings. They have also introduced jinni dosa with fruit chunks, cheese etc and added a section for kids too.
The idea of a dessert dosa came when they had personal guests visiting them one afternoon. Says Shah, “Those guests were here after lunch and when we offered them dosas, they sighed and said they had eaten a lot and only longed for something sweet. We then ordered ice-creams for them. That gave us an idea to experiment with filling our dosas with ice-cream. It was appreciated by our guests.
We then created a range of dessert dosas which can be filled with ice-creams or fruity fillings,’’ recounts Shah. Apart from their own cafes in Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Rajkot and Surat, they are also getting orders for on-site party catering. “We have also started a café called The Indian StrEat Kitchens in Vadodara with streetfoods of various states of India, and we will be taking this brand to other cities too,” says Trivedi.
He says they are now working on the model of giving kiosks to the underprivileged to sell their dosas and snacks under the So South brand at street corners. “This will be a social enterprise by So South that will help promote our brand and at the same time create revenue for the disabled and the unemployed,” he concludes.
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