Conscious Choice: South Indian Vegetarian

June 2001 | Conscious Dining

South Indian Vegetarian

by Lauren Malloy

Indian food, for the most part, is a rather lavish affair — Taj Majal-like grandiosity, silver-plated dishes, exotic spices in the air. But on Devon Avenue, a different breed of Indian restaurant has emerged — the all-vegetarian South Indian restaurant. The menus at such places grant no clues about what one might find inside, since most dishes are listed by their Indian names, including whole new categories of menu items such as dosai, uthappam, and thalis. Oh, there are familiar Indian curries, breads, and rice dishes for the less adventurous, but they clearly play a secondary role to the South Indian specialties.

Mysore Woodlands is the largest and most prominent of the four vegetarian restaurants located within four corners of each other. While its ambiance is definitely a step up from the neighboring fast-food restaurant Annapurna, Mysore is certainly no exercise in grandeur. Bare walls dotted by the occasional Hindu religious painting provide a backdrop to simple furnishings of shiny black formica tables and carpeted floors well lit by bright overhead lights. A quiet hum of Indian dialects from guests and staff intermingles with soft Indian music.

The best way to sample the fare at Mysore or any other Indian vegetarian restaurant is to try one of the thalis, an ensemble of a dozen or so tiny stainless steel ramekins, each filled to the brim with a different unidentifiable concoction. The menu doesn’t help much in explaining what one might find on such a platter, since items are listed by such unfamiliar Indian names as avial, medu vada, or sambar. Waiters may not be of much help either — not all of them speak English. There are, however, usually one or two staff members on the premises who will attempt some explanation if asked.

Determined to conquer my ignorance of the South Indian menu once and for all, I made it my personal mission to decipher those mysterious menu contents. To do so, I consulted a few Indian cookbooks and pestered any English-speaking staff member who would listen to fill in the remaining blanks.

Let’s start with the thali. A thali is, basically, a full meal, composed of all the necessary components of a complete Indian meal, which includes dahl, rice, breads, yogurt, and vegetable dishes. Mysore offers two variations, both of which are enough to feed a family of six for a week — definitely expanded versions of the typical thali in India. The Mysore Royal Thali is served in two phases — appetizers, followed by the main course.

Appetizers shouldn’t be missed, whether as part of the thali or on their own, if not for the selections themselves, then at least for the spectacle of the parade of chutneys that accompany them. From creamy coconut, fragrant mint, and sweet tamarind to spicy tomato or onion, each chutney bathes the appetizer in a flavor all its own. Some — like the iddly, a cornbread-textured steamed-rice-and-lentil cake, or various incarnations of the vada, a sturdier fried lentil patty — don’t have much flavor of their own, so they pick up a new taste with each chutney they are dipped into. Others, like the alu bonda, vegetable cutlet, or samosa, which all contain the same yellowish mashed potato, onions, and pea filling in different shapes and sizes, benefit from a more neutral dipping, such as the mint chutney, or none at all.

The appetizer portion of the Royal Thali experience also includes a choice of soup — tomato, a remnant of English rule appropriately spruced up with Indian spices, mulligatawny, a creamy vegetable and lentil soup, and the rasam, a clear broth of tamarind and spices that is reputed to be a digestive aid and definitely feels like one.

The next course brings channa (chick-pea) curry, koottu (the lentil curry of the day), sambar (a soup-like dahl mixed with chunks of vegetables and herbs), avial (the coconut milk-flavored vegetable curry of the day), special rice (the rice dish of the day), curd (house-made yogurt), and pickle (preserved mango, lemon, and whole garlic cloves in a spicy, oily base). Teapot (whole-wheat flat bread), basmati rice, and papad (spicy fried lentil wafers) come with the whole ensemble as a base or wrapper for the various dishes.

Since many of the selections change each day, what you get can be hit or miss. On one occasion the avial of cauliflower, carrots, and green beans was excellent; on another occasion an avial of plantains completely missed the mark. But what is consistent is sweet yogurt that you can’t buy in a store, perfectly spiced chickpea curry, and the ubiquitous sambar that comes with so many dishes it starts to seem like an old friend. The South Indian Thali is sufficient for those with less hearty appetites, as it comes without the appetizers, soup, and special rice. It does include the familiar yellow creamy dahl, and poriyal, which is a dry curry, or mix of vegetables without a sauce.

There are also some interesting choices for those diners not hungry or adventurous enough to try a thali. Indian diners comprise the majority of the restaurant’s guests, and most of them seem to order the dosai. These paper-thin crepes come with a variety of fillings, the most popular being the yellow-colored mashed potato and onion masala that comes with the paper masala dosai. While most dosai are soft crepes folded over in the manner of omelets, paper dosai are dramatic crispy cylinders that are nearly a foot and a half in length. Servers recommend using the hands to wrap the masala in the dosai, then dipping the concoction in the sambar and coconut chutney that comes with it. Alternatively, diners can pour the accompaniments over the dosai, then slice it with a knife and fork.

Also interesting, and probably my favorite among the bread-and-dip selections, is the uthappam, a large pancake made from a fermented batter of lentil and rice flour. The fermentation gives the dough a slightly sour taste, like that of sour dough bread, and a porous texture that is more solid and elastic than other bread varieties. Upon the advice of my server, I opted for the vegetable uthappam, which includes a topping of chilis, peas, carrots, and onions that added texture and dimension to the already tasty pancake. Like the dosai, uthappam makes a fine meal, especially when dipped in the accompanying sambar and chutney.

Another server recommendation, the channa batura, was as good as our waiter promised. A giant pizza-size puff of fried bread arrived as the designated wrapping device for a sweet and sour curry of chickpeas and tomatoes. Oddly, the dish came with a side dish of raw sliced onions, which were completely unnecessary since the dish was already blanketed in a layer of raw onions so thick we had to push most of them aside. (If you don’t like raw onions, request that your server leave them out.)

Thalis come with your choice of any dessert on the menu. As would be expected from any self-respecting Indian restaurant, all the ones we tried were sweet beyond description, but we did manage to get a few bites in without going into insulin shock. The Madras Special Pyasam was a rice porridge of milk, honey, raisins, and cashews that was slightly less sweet than usual Indian desserts, while the sweetness of almond halwa was toned down by a topping of mango ice cream. Disappointingly, the masala tea, commonly known in trendy circles as chai, was not what we know it can be. Lassis, on the other hand, those yogurt-based drinks that come in sweet, salty, and mango varieties, are a soothing end to a meal that inevitably includes an underlying base of spicy flavors.

Mysore Woodlands, 2548 W. Devon Avenue, 773-338-8160.

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