A friend of mine emailed me this photograph of a mini-dosa from a desi restaurant’s lunch buffet in Davis Square:
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It’s not the size of the dosa that counts, it’s the flavour of the filling |
From a restauranteur’s perspective, this innovation makes perfect sense. You can’t serve everybody a dosa, it’s too large. And you can’t serve dosa slices either. Enter the mini-dosa, everybody gets dosaed, the restaurant has less waste, everybody goes home happy right?
And while we’re on the topic of alternadosas, how about totally American fillings like “Grilled Chicken with Goat Cheese, Spinach and Roasted Tomatoes” or “Tuna with Cilantro Chutney Dressing, Avacado, Arugala & Tomato“?
Are these reasonable innovations or travesties wrought by American commerce on the fine traditions of Madrasi South Indian cooking? In other words, is it a shanda like the bagel stick with the cream cheese inside, AKA the bagel Twinkie?
Ever toast, spread cream cheese on, and eat a bagel, and be like, damn, this is taking too long? Kraft’s Bagelfuls, essentially, a bagel Twinkie, are for you. A “Bagelful” is a frozen bagel tube with cream cheese inside. They’re kept in the refrigerator and then toasted, microwaved, or even eaten straight from the box. [Link]
How do we tell when a departure from beloved tradition is actually progress?
27 · Nina P said
Long before there was any
snobupmarket value attached to a Hampton anything, there was Major Grey’s Chutney, which fully evoked the character of the earlier globalization.Floridian, wonderful contributions upthread. Maximum Respect!
Neale, sorry I messed the block quote thing with your name within quotes. I was having a Bihari moment.
No problem Floridian. I , myself, have secretly been eyeing the jitterbug.
19 · Pooja P. said
coz in Mysore it’s just called a Masala Dosa!
Sorry had to dig on that 😀
Damn, where can one get a “consistently” good dosa in l.a?
Neale: “consistently” good dosas in LA to be found at:
Thanks dillidibilli ,
Have to check out 3 & 4.
I’m opposed to this burritozation of the dosa. dosa’s should be ripped and dipped (btw, notice no sambar in the pic?) and the inner fillings scooped up to control chutney or potato distribution.
139 · bess said
I might be. I called you the best didn’t I?
You never, ever eat a dosa like a burrito. It’s funny, because you can do ANYTHING else with it, slop the sambhar all over, stir it into a mush, pick the plate up and slurp it down if you want, but you never eat it like a burrito.
If anybody wants to continue the battle in person over dosas in LA, I’m up for it.
157 · Manju said
As a kid growing up in UP, I remember that dosa was one of the few things that were served with a fork and knife in the restaurants. These were not high-end restaurants, just run-of-the-mill restaurants. Other things like chola-bhatura, sabzi, naan etc were served with just a spoon, but the dosa plate always had fork and knife. It never seemed odd to me at that time 🙂
Minkeychief, I have a crazy life right now, but might take you (and other SMers) up on this at some point :).
BTW, Woodlands (in Chatsworth) have a website that tells you all about their unlimited dosa nights and other such dreams come true.
IMO, of the four dosa places I mentioned above, Parus and Tirupathy Bhimas are the best…although Annapurna and Woodlands are good too. Does anyone know if the Chatsworth Woodlands is a ‘branch’ of the Woodlands chain? It seems much smaller and homier.
For those looking for dosa’s in the Southland, try Dosa Place in Tustin if it’s not too far! http://www.dosaplace.com
151 · chachaji
I am almost embarrassed to reproduce your kind words, but I just wanted to express my appreciation to you. I, too, read your thoroughly researched and insightful comments from time to time. You are one of the stars of SM.
146 · boston_mahesh You are not a Bihari, are you? Then why are you copying and pasting my entire comment into your own comment without proper attribution, (not that my comment are so precious)?
161 · dillidibilli
The chain affiliation, I found out much to my surprise, is extremely tenuous with some of these desi “chains” such as Woodlands, Udipi and Moti Mahal, all landmark restaurants in India. A few of the Woodlands owners in the US have told me that there is no Woodlands organization in India or America that they have to pay royalties to. I suppose the other Woodlands owners don’t object to any new upstart naming their new restaurant Woodlands because many of them are pirating the brand anyway, and expanding the chain is ultimately better for all the players.
The yeast yindiyans are the most cultured of all.
Don’t know about the SoCal branch, but have not heard good things about the one in the Bay Area. Also, Dosa Place (in San Jose?) is the new “it” dosa restaurant in the Bay Area, from what I hear.
Ennis, I swear that chicken is starting to smell.
Thanks, Floridian: how interesting, although it does explain why the variety one sees in the assorted Woodlands,Udipis etc one sees across the US.
143 · Neale said
149 · Floridian said
You got me. It is just a face I prepare to meet the faces that I meet. But after masala chais and kesaris and kulfis, I do not have the strength to force the moment to its crisis.
Yep, the entire Woodlands/Udupi naming scheme in the U.S. is a scam to evoke the Pavlovian salivation response among habituated desis. And don’t even get me started on the Taj Mahals and Shalimars!
154 · KarmaByte said
So, in Mysore, you just ask for Pak, if you want this particular sweet?
Sorry, I just had to dig on the dig :))
169 · Prasad said
Touche
Sorry, that previous comment was missing a link. SM Intern, can you delete it? What I meant to say was:
I dig this dig. You dig?
128 · brown_dbd said
Don’t be so quick to dismiss the idea. It is because you have lived in UP all your life you miss the perspective. I have met many UPites in Mumbai who claim to be Punjabi. When pressed for an explanation they claim it is to avoid the stigma of being called “bhaiyyas” and since they were upper caste UPites not bhaiyyas (as in Yadav etc.) they prefer being known as Punjabis.
Biharis in Bihar dont need to hide their Bihari origins, put them in the company of few bhaiiya hating shiv sainiks see how fast they turn 🙂
Yo Rahul, No linkz needed, bro, I speak jive.
LOL..well said…..First things first: South Indian does NOT mean Madrasi. My dear Mutineers, let’s take this opportunity to learn some facts:
“South Indian does not mean Madrasi”, “South Indian does not mean Madrasi”……..
No one uses the term “Madrasi” anymore….at least those who live outside caves. As boston_mahesh says: It was “your father’s stereotype”
If anyone says “None of you Madarasis know any Hindi”, slap him/her. Have you watched Tamil movies lately? All the leading lady roles are pretty North Indian imports (I’m not complaining..at all….Keep it coming)! Then, the directors/actors marry those bombshells (grrrhhhh..) and have babies like Sonia Palanichamy, Kajol Paruthiveeran, Aamir Ramalingam, etc
Jyothika weds Surya Sonia Agarwal weds Selvaraghavan
We have dedicated Hindi songs in Kollywood movies: saroja saamaan nikaalo
Now, back to the Dosa, at hand (?!): LEAVE MY DOSA ALONE!!!
My true Tamzhilian blood is boiling.Vaanam pozhikirathu, Boomi vizhaikirathu, dosaiku enna kurai? non-Tamzhilians, excuse and jump here to get the context from the subtitles – Katta Bomman Dialog
That picture is wrong in every pixel, including the shrunk dosa. Where is my sambhar, chutney, kushka/kolambu, oily rasam /chilli powder? What are those green stuff on the plate?
I don’t mind having a small dosa, as long as you stick to the Dosa Patent, as certified by entire South India. A dosa without sambar and chutney, WTF???????? Any self-respecting South Indian will walk away from that restaurant.
I take great umbrage over this whole thing X-( It’s an assault equivalent to making thick burgers thin and then remove the ketchup, mustard, lettuce and tomato
Back to the dosa theme:
The better Indian buffets in the US are now serving made-to-order dosas even with the $8.95 all you-can-eat spreads, not the limp stuff sitting in steam trays.
A recent innovation in the dosa making business is the tent shape. I hate it, but it’s there.
I know what I am having for lunch tomorrow.
The equivalent of black americans calling each other niggas? Good idea
In Mysore it is known as masalae. No Dosa!! And it is traditionally served only with coconut chutney. Sambar is served only by “Madrasis”. (literally the people from Madras eat their dosas with chutneys and sambar). Today in the various darshinis both sambar and chutney is served, but not by the traditional MTR or Vidyarthi Bhavan.
The reason we resent being called Madrasis is because we are from Karnataka and NOT TN!(where by the way Tamil New Year was moved to Jan 14 by a govt. order!)
Hmmm, let’s see:
Biharis claim they are uttar pradeshis Uttar Pradeshis claim they are punjabis (except the muslim urdu speakers who look down on punjabis since they claim they are persians, arabs or turks) Punjabis claim they are Scythians
So it turns out that all north indians are ashamed to be from India. Funny or pathetic? You decide.
That, not surprisingly, works the other way round too. For most South Indians, anyone from north of Andhra is a Northie. I, being Maharashtrian, end up getting a lot of shit from both sides.
This really depends. While “Singh” (for Hindus) is typically a Rajput name, there are certainly Punjabi Hindus who have that last name, too. It’s religious and non-religious, depending on your background.
Also, Delhi is NOT doabi, nor has it been at any point in its modern history.
During pre-colonial/colonial times, very small parts of western UP were at times part of what was then called Punjab. This may explain why some people identify as Punjabi even though the borders of where they are from may have shifted since then. I don’t doubt your anecdote, but I seriously doubt that the masses are clamoring to be Punju. While the uncouth Punjabi may be your father/grandfather’s stereotype, it is still alive today. You certainly hear it within India and within the diaspora. I have also NEVER met other Northies who “clamor” to identify as Punjabi. Every state has its own stereotype/stigma. I’m sure it’s possible to find at least one person out there “passing” as another group. That doesn’t mean the majority act or feel the same way.
Oh, and the mini-dosay look cute and much more edible. I always feel wasteful when I order dosa b/c I can never finish one on my own! I am ambivalent to unhappy with the crepe-style bastardization of dosa; at that point, why not just call it a vegan crepe?
The food crisis is distressing. I don’t know that small portions are driven just by rising costs of grain, however; I think that nutritionism is also a driving factor.
And I want to echo the poster above — Happy Vaisakhi!
I’m from Delhi and this is the first time I’ve heard anybody goes out of their way to be considered Punjabi! If anything, it’s considered an insult. Just the other day I was talking with my friend in Delhi, who happens to be punjabi and I asked about her 13 year old son. She goes, OMG, he’s turning into a total punjabi – meaning he’s becoming uncouth and uncultured. So while I can’t tell you who the couth and cultured indians are, it certainly wouldn’t be the punjabis. But punjabis themselves seem to be quite happy with who they are, so it’s all good i suppose.
those little dosas may sell at 7-11. they already have sushi and burritos, not to mention the fact that you can’t go there without having an indian accent.
But, Floridian, kids just love the topi dosa. I was out at dinner with two friends who both have toddlers, and they were so thrilled to get these cones, they actually allowed their parents to participate in entire conversations for the duration of the entire meal!
Tom Tancredosa and Aalou Vadobbs agree.
i just made the mistake of ordering a masala dosa to go. i think the packaging turned it into a wet noodle and it lost all its crispness. so put dosas in the sushi category…no take out, must be eaten as soon as its prepared.
should’ve had a burrito.
185 · Rahul said
desi arnaz is torn
184 · Rahul said
Ah, I was wondering if “tent” meant the cone-shaped ones. In many to most places in Bangalore, if you order a plain dosa it comes in the cone shape (and has done for at least 30 years). (My age… ish.)
for the new yorkers, i just checked out tiffinwala last week – it was better than i had expected, and satisfied my sides-trifecta of chutney, sambar, and podi. but they gave me masala w/ my dosa, and for some reason i hate the masala with any dosa.
rahul, http://www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/archives/005138.html#comment199919, and pingpong : the cheesiness is killing me (and in a bad way, like a paneer dosa) 😉
In no particular order…
The state of Mysore was renamed Karnataka in the 1970s. Mysore is also city in Karnataka.
I’ve had plenty of Pakistani cabbies in NYC ask me if I was a ‘Madrasi’. No contempt or condescension in tone of voice. I grew up in Delhi and conversely, I never heard the term ‘Madrasi’ used with anything than a scornful, contemptuous and dismissive tone of voice. Younger North Indians these days have the good sense (and exposure to diversity) not to use the term anymore.
That picture of a leg of Tandoori chicken alongside a dosa is enough to put most TamBrahm vegetarians off food for a while. Piece of dead animal next to tiffin. Yuck. Even though I’m quite comfortable with the items served separately. Non-veg SIs find this inconsistency hilarious, I know.
Masala dosas, were invented in Mysore in the 1930s, according to my Mom. Initially, they were strictly a commercial dish. Of course, people at home tried their hand at making them pretty soon. Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that domestic ‘Thosais’ have always been on the smallish side. The huge mutant 3 foot long dosas are strictly a restaurant phenomenon.
i meant : rahul, manju, and pingpong : the cheesiness is killing me (and in a bad way, like a paneer dosa) 😉
190 · ak said
this may help
138 · Floridian said
A Supplication
Sir, perhaps you’d deign to sire a batallion of half-caste Iyer; Given your rather thick dossier, of torrid, austral-northern affairs, By now, you must have surely learned, Paneer dosas musn’t be cruelly spurned. Granted, they’re may an acquired taste; But only the callous judge in haste.
PS: the above is dedicated to Rahul, in case, my motives aren’t transparent. i like my motives to match my dress, because i’m classy like that.
I want to give brown_dbd (his) props. Also, the map (he) linked in is in color and shows the whole of British India, unlike the one I linked in. He made essentially the same point some 22 comments before I did, and I apologize for having missed it.
As an aside, and to complete the story – not only were parts of the other 3 Southern States in the Madras Presidency – but Sindh and (most of what is now) Gujarat (except for Kathiawad and Baroda, princely states) were in the Bombay Presidency; and almost all of Bihar, Orissa and Assam, along with both E. and W. Bengal, were in the Bengal Presidency (except for princely states like Cooch Behar).
Again, my apologies to brown_dbd for missing his fine comment earlier.
Thanks for the citation Chachaji 🙂
180 · Camille said
Camille, can you explain what you mean by nutritionism? I’ve desperately wanted to stay ahead of the curve on the food price issue, both domestic and international, but I’ve been eaten alive by work. When I hear “nutritionism”, I think Michael Pollan. Is that the sort of nutritionism that you’re referring to? Can you point me to some literature that explores this further and how it relates to food prices?
Where to even begin…firstly, most Indians are NOT urban or refined…it’s an agricultural society for the most part, people.
As for the Punjabi language, it has the unfortunate fate of always being compared to Hindi/Urdu for some reason. People need to look at it on its own merits. I would say it’s no more rustic than Hindi varieties spoken by millions and millions of farmers in northern India. It’s true that Punjabi has a rougher sound than urban Hindi/Urdu…part of the reason a more refined version of Punjabi never arose is because it historically was never the main literary language of Punjab…that post being held initially by Persian, later Urdu, and then also English and Hindi. Punjabi only really became used widely as a literary language in post-1947 Indian Punjab, and that too mainly by Sikhs. Of course there is a lot of medieval poetry and literature, much if not most of it by Muslim Sufis, and it is as refined (while maintaining its basic character) as anything else.
Anyway, Punjabi, like most languages, exists on a spectrum, from extremely pure, rural, and hard-core like this, to rather more elegant and refined like this. Note there is no value judgement there, as both sound great to me.
Check out this very beautiful Pakistani lady sing this nice traditional song.
That chicken leg looks thoroughly unappetizing. Meanwhile, the nations of the Indian subcontinent, already the hungriest region of the planet, are facing a food crisis of epic proportions:
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/04/14/world.food.crisis/?imw=Y&iref=mpstoryemail
“(CNN) — Riots from Haiti to Bangladesh to Egypt over the soaring costs of basic foods have brought the issue to a boiling point and catapulted it to the forefront of the world’s attention, the head of an agency focused on global development said Monday.”This is the world’s big story,” said Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute.
“The finance ministers were in shock, almost in panic this weekend,” he said on CNN’s “American Morning,” in a reference to top economic officials who gathered in Washington. “There are riots all over the world in the poor countries … and, of course, our own poor are feeling it in the United States.”
““While many are worrying about filling their gas tanks, many others around the world are struggling to fill their stomachs, and it is getting more and more difficult every day,” Zoellick said late last week in a speech opening meetings with finance ministers. “
“In just two months,” Zoellick said in his speech, “rice prices have skyrocketed to near historical levels, rising by around 75 percent globally and more in some markets, with more likely to come. In Bangladesh, a 2-kilogram bag of rice … now consumes about half of the daily income of a poor family.” The price of wheat has jumped 120 percent in the past year, he said — meaning that the price of a loaf of bread has more than doubled in places where the poor spend as much as 75 percent of their income on food.”
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-food-prices-global-crisis-story,0,3603827.story
“As global food prices race upward, no place demonstrates the growing risks to the planet as much as India  home to more than half of the world’s hungry.“
“All told, 33 countries around the world are at risk of social upheaval as a result of acute increases in food and energy prices, said Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, in a speech this month. In countries where buying food requires half to three-quarters of a poor person’s income, “there is no margin for survival,” he warned.”
“India, which has more malnourished people than anywhere else in the worldâ€â€Âeven more than sub-Saharan Africa in both absolute and percentage termsâ€â€Âis so far not counted among the countries most in danger. Largely that’s because its government runs the world’s biggest food aid program, an $8.4 billion effort that pushes 15 million tons of subsidized wheat and rice a year to hundreds of millions of people. The United Nations’ World Food Program, the world’s biggest food relief aid agency, by comparison, ships just 5 million tons of food a year to 73 million hungry people at a cost of $3.4 billion, WFP officials said.”
“But India has the potential to play a big role in accelerating the world’s developing food crisis. With its population and its per capita demand for food growing faster than its agricultural productivity, the nation of 1.1 billion is edging toward becoming a net importer of food, a reality that could turn the current spikes in international food prices into consistent highs for a decade or more as demand grows, analysts say. India, the world’s biggest rice producer after China, is also a major exporter of rice to Bangladesh, one of the poorest and most vulnerable nations in the world. Its decision late last month to ban exports of all but high-priced basmati rice could eventually hit hard at Bangladesh and other hungry neighbors, which may be forced to start importing food at prices higher than those they pay to India. So far Bangladesh has received a limited exemption from the export curb.”
Inside India itself, inflation is eroding the buying power of millions of people like Raju with little ability to pay more for food. That is a huge political worry for India’s ruling party, which faces elections this year and already has begun pulling a variety of economic levers, including cutting duties on imported food, in a desperate effort to hold down prices.
India today sets its poverty line at an income of about 33 cents a day, a third of the international extreme poverty standard of $1 a day. As food prices rise, it may be forced to recalibrate its calculation of the number of Indian families who need help, requiring the government to add billions of dollars a year to a food aid budget that already has surged 27 percent since the 2006-07 financial year.India hopes to address its own looming problem by increasing its agricultural productivity, now just half that of China, which has much more irrigated farmland, said Ramesh Chand, an agricultural economist at the National Center for Agricultural Economics and Policy Research.
But in a country where 60 percent to 70 percent of people make their living farming small plots and there are few jobs for unskilled labor in the cities, moving small farmers off their land to expand larger-scale agriculture would be difficult.
A better option for cutting hunger, Indian agricultural economists say, would be new government-funded work programs to build irrigation canals and improve a disastrous infrastructure, particularly rural roads that are now so overburdened and potholed that more than 30 percent of the country’s agricultural produce spoils on the way to market.
Increasing agricultural output fast enough will be tough, particularly with the government announcing last week that it intends to put 30 million acres into biofuel crops by 2017.
In India, as in much of the world, nobody is quite sure whether world food production will increase to meet growing demandâ€â€Âas has happened repeatedly over the centuriesâ€â€Âor whether a new era of permanently higher prices and hungrier times is on the horizon.
“It’s a very difficult question,” said Arif Husain, a food policy analyst with the World Food Program in Rome. “Nobody knows what the long run means right now. We are in uncharted waters.”
That’ll do it, but when in Chennai make sure you say Mysore-pak, lest they confuse it with Chennai-pak or just plain old pak >:)
Vyasa, you forgot to bold this phrase “said Ramesh Chand, an agricultural economist at the National Center for Agricultural Economics and Policy Research.” Otherwise, the rest was very pertinent, especially for those of us who are incapable of clicking through links and need everything cut and pasted. I also realize this might be a good practice in China where arbitrary websites are censored, so you want to make sure you have local copies of everything.