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Southern Indian on Valencia
- Review of: Dosa
- By: Avery Glasser
- Rating:
- Read review on Judy’s Book.
Tonight, after watching Dosa being built and then finally opening just weeks ago, we decided to stop in for a quick dinner.
Dosa is a special sort of restaurant for San Francisco – instead of focusing on the common tandoori dishes of northern India and Pakistan, it focuses on the crepes and chickpea dishes of southern India – the wonderful dishes of cities such as Chennai, Goa and Tamil Nadu. Here, you’ll find mostly vegetarian with a single chicken appetizer and a few meat based curries. The main courses revolve around dosa and uttapam – vegetable filled crepes and pancake like chickpea breads with added in vegetables and spices.
Arriving at 7pm, we were lucky to be able to get a table – a single two-seater that had just become available. Considering that a group of four that had arrived just before us had been quoted a 1.5 hour wait for a table, we felt that this was a good omen.
The food? Wonderful. I started with the Chicken Chennai – spicy chickpea battered chicken served over mixed greens and garnished with slivered red onion – which was fantastic, possibly the second best Indian chicken dish I have had, surpassed solely by Mehfil’s Chicken Laccha. Following that was the Coriander and Chili Uttayam – perfect on its own and magically made better by dipping it in the wonderful coconut chutney.
Dosa’s decor was also quite nice – using deep salmon colors accented by brown wood and frosted glass partitions. From a restaurant flow perspective, the bar was too crowded, making it difficult to follow the maitre d’ to our table. The bathrooms were clean and the service seemed to lack any noticable defects aside from the fact that our main courses came a little too quickly after our appetizers.
Two appetizers, two main courses, three beers and a “chai russian” – a variant of a white russian using chai and soju instead of Kahlua and vodka came to $61 without tax. We’ll certainly return here – next time saving room to try one of the tempting desserts.
No reservations for parties of 4 or less and no hard alcohol. Beer, wine and soju “cocktails” available. Credit cards accepted.”
Visit Date: 03/26/2006
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