Walk into any Gujarati household in Leicester, Wembley or Manchester during Diwali week and you’ll find the same thing on the coffee table. A wide steel plate. Little heaps of yellow strands, thick spirals, flat wedges dusted with masala, some boondi in a small bowl on the side. The Diwali snacks people talk about online are usually a lookalike version of this. The real Gujarati thali is far more specific – and once you understand what it holds and why, choosing what to serve or buy becomes much easier.
What a Gujarati Diwali Thali Really Means
The plate in a Gujarati home is not a menu. It’s closer to a ritual – a steady rotation of savoury pieces and mithai that stays out for the full five days of the festival. Guests arrive without warning, and the plate has to be ready. Neighbours drop in carrying their own boxes. Children help themselves between rounds of cards, chai and rangoli-making.
What sits on the plate depends on where the family originally comes from. A Kathiawadi household lays out different pieces to a Surti one, and an Ahmedabadi thali has its own quirks again. But across all these regions, the core group of savouries stays remarkably consistent. They’re deep-fried, made from besan or a besan-and-dal blend, and seasoned with ajwain, black pepper, cumin, chilli and a little asafoetida.
The plate is not there to fill you up. It’s there to sit alongside chai, to break up conversation, to pair with a cube of kaju katli or a slice of mohanthal from a separate dish. That is the plate. Now let’s look at what actually goes on it.
The Six Diwali Snacks That Never Leave the Plate
Fafda
Long, flat, slightly bendy strips of besan, seasoned with carom seeds and black pepper, then deep-fried until they hold that pale-gold colour Gujarati mothers can spot from across the room. In Ahmedabad and Vadodara, fafda is a breakfast food. On any Sunday morning you’ll find queues outside farsan shops waiting for a fresh batch to come out of the fryer, still warm, served with a spoon of green chutney and a chunk of jalebi.
During Diwali the same pieces travel onto the family plate. Sometimes with a small side of shredded raw papaya salad. Sometimes just on their own. The trick is texture – a good piece has a slight give, a snap that comes through halfway rather than at the first bite. Too crisp and it turns into a cracker. Too soft and the seasoning falls flat.
At Chandra Foods, fafda has been on the shelf since the shop opened its doors in Park Royal, London, back in 1985. The recipe hasn’t changed. During Diwali week, boxes of it go out from the warehouse to homes from Southall to Edinburgh, most of them repeat orders from families who set the plate the same way every year.
Gathiya
Fafda’s thicker, richer cousin. Where fafda is thin and springy, gathiya is a proper handful – plump, uneven strips of besan, more heavily seasoned with pepper and asafoetida, sometimes dusted with a red masala coating.
Kathiawadi households treat gathiya as the anchor of the Diwali thali. In the Saurashtra region – Bhavnagar, Rajkot, Jamnagar – the gathiya is thicker than most, softer inside, and eaten with a side of small deep-fried green chillies and a bowl of shredded raw onion tossed in lemon juice. It’s a small ritual. Pick up a piece of gathiya, pinch off some onion, take a bite of chilli. Repeat.
There are variations. Thikha gathiya for those who prefer heat. Methi gathiya scented with dried fenugreek leaves. Palak gathiya with spinach worked into the dough. In a UK Gujarati home the standard thikha version tends to win. It carries a bit more attitude on the tongue, holds up well on the plate, and pairs with masala chai without either overpowering the other.
Chakri
Also known as chakli in Maharashtra and murukku across South India, chakri is the Diwali snack that gets photographed the most. The spiral shape is instantly recognisable – a coil of dough pressed through a mould, deep-fried into a rigid, crunchy loop.
The Gujarati version is made from a blend of rice flour, besan and moong dal flour, seasoned with cumin, sesame seeds, ajwain and a touch of butter or ghee. Some households add a pinch of chilli powder, others keep it plain. Methi chakri – with dried fenugreek – turns up during Diwali too, particularly in homes where the older generation still makes their own.
Chakri is the piece on the plate that survives the longest. It stays crisp for weeks in an airtight tin, so families in the UK often order it early in October knowing it’ll still be at its best when the last day of the festival rolls around. For younger children on the plate, it’s usually the first snack they reach for – the spiral shape is easy to hold, the crunch is dramatic, and the flavour is milder than gathiya or fafda.
Chevda
Chevda is the “mixture” you’ve almost certainly bought as Bombay mix at some point. Except the shop-bought British version is a distant cousin of the real thing. Proper Gujarati chevda contains flat poha, fried besan sev, curry leaves, peanuts, chana dal, sometimes cashews, sometimes raisins, and a spice blend that includes turmeric, salt, sugar and dried red chilli.
It sits in a bowl on the thali rather than a heap. People take a spoonful, tip it into their palm, eat it in one go. The mix of textures – soft poha, crisp sev, chewy raisin, crunchy nut – is the whole appeal. No single element dominates.
Regional chevda varies wildly. Farali chevda, made with sabudana and potato, appears during Navratri and sometimes carries over into Diwali. Bhungra chevda from Surat uses puffed rice as its base. What every version shares is the golden-yellow turmeric colour and the balance of sweet-savoury-spice that makes it hard to stop at one handful.
Sev
The fine yellow strands you see scattered across so many chaat dishes are sev – pressed strands of besan dough, deep-fried in seconds until they turn crisp. On the Diwali thali, sev sits somewhere between a snack and a garnish. A small mound stays on the plate for anyone who wants it plain, and the same box gets raided when someone decides to top their chevda with a bit extra.
Ratlami sev, spiced with clove and pepper, is the assertive version. Nylon sev, ultra-fine, is milder and traditionally used on pani puri and bhel puri. Palak sev, made with spinach, brings a slightly earthy flavour. On a Gujarati Diwali plate you’ll usually see the fine or medium variety.
Boondi
Small, deep-fried droplets of besan batter, sometimes plain, sometimes tossed in masala. Boondi is the smallest thing on the Diwali thali, and it usually sits in its own bowl because it’s impossible to eat without half of it rolling off the plate.
Masala boondi carries a light coating of chilli, chaat masala and dried mint. The plain version, called mithi boondi when sweetened, is what goes into raita. During Diwali, savoury boondi is the pick. A spoonful, a scoop, a handful into the mouth. It’s the piece people reach for absently while they’re mid-conversation.
How UK Gujarati Homes Serve These Diwali Snacks
The UK Gujarati Diwali thali is almost identical to the one in Ahmedabad, but the sourcing has changed. In Gujarat, families buy from the neighbourhood farsan shop that has been there for two generations. In the UK, most families buy from a supplier they trust to make it the traditional way.
That’s the reason a brand like Chandra Foods has stayed in business for four decades. Families in Wembley, Leicester and Manchester know that the indian savoury snacks they buy for Diwali need to match what their parents laid out back in Gujarat. Not a rough approximation. The actual thing – the same texture, the same seasoning, the same colour.
That trust matters more during Diwali than any other time of year. A family throwing open its door to twenty relatives on the fourth day of the festival cannot afford a batch of gathiya that has gone soft, or a fafda that tastes wrong. They order early, they order in bulk, and they order from a shop that has done this every October for forty years.
The thali is also the moment when younger UK-born Gujarati children learn the names. What is this one? Chakri. What’s inside? Rice and besan. Why is it in a spiral? Because that’s the shape. The plate is a small classroom, and Diwali is the term.
Building Your Own Diwali Thali This Year
If you’re putting one together for the first time – say you’ve married into a Gujarati family, or you’re hosting friends and want to get it right – the mix that never fails is one fafda pack for thin, bendy black pepper strips, one gathiya pack for the thicker, more heavily spiced anchor of the plate, one chakri pack for the spiral crunch, one chevda pack for the soft-crunch mix, one boondi pack for a small bowl on the side, and a separate box of sev.
That is the working plate. Add one or two mithai on a separate dish – mohanthal, kaju katli, magas – and you have a Diwali table that any Gujarati grandmother would recognise.
The rest is presentation. Steel plates are traditional but not essential. Small bowls for the boondi and chevda. Nothing needs a garnish. The point is that the food speaks for itself. If you’d rather buy a fuller range of gujarati snacks than assemble the plate piece by piece, the traditional collection is where most UK households start. The mix is put together for exactly this occasion – a plate that lasts the full five days without any single snack running out too early.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is a Gujarati Diwali thali?
- A Diwali thali is a plate of savoury snacks and sweets that stays out through the five days of Diwali for family, guests and neighbours. The Gujarati version is dominated by besan-based savouries like fafda, gathiya, chakri, chevda, sev and boondi, with mithai served on a separate plate.
- When is Diwali 2026 in the UK?
- Diwali 2026 falls on Sunday 8 November. The five-day festival begins with Dhanteras on Friday 6 November and continues through Bhai Dooj on Tuesday 10 November.
- What sweets go with a Gujarati Diwali thali?
- Mohanthal (a fudge-like besan sweet), kaju katli (cashew mithai), magas (a Gujarati variant of besan ladoo), sukhdi (a jaggery and ghee-based sweet from Kathiawad) and shrikhand are the most common. Sweets are usually served on a separate plate so the savoury snacks don’t pick up moisture.
- Can I buy authentic Gujarati Diwali snacks online in the UK?
- Yes. Family-run suppliers like Chandra Foods have been shipping traditional Gujarati Diwali snacks across the UK for four decades. Ordering in early October gives packs time to arrive before the festival begins and keeps every piece on the thali fresh through all five days.
- What’s the difference between a Gujarati Diwali thali and other regional versions?
- Regional plates differ in what’s included. A Maharashtrian Diwali thali features more chakli, chivda and shankarpali. A Punjabi one leans on samosas and pakoras. A Bengali version emphasises sweets over savouries. The Gujarati version stands out for its dominant besan base, its Kathiawadi and Surti variations, and the ritual of leaving the plate out for all five days.
