Sri Ganesh’s Dosa House is a no-frills South Indian restaurant located on the glitzy stretch of Newark Avenue known as India Square. These blocks are populated by a plethora of South Asian groceries, clothing, video, and sweet shops. Mannequins in storefront displays model vibrantly colored outfits encrusted with hundreds of gemstones and stare vacantly out over a street busy with evening activities. Some people, arms loaded with groceries, head home to prepare dinner, but everyone else seems to pour into Sri Ganesh’s Dosa House ready for a South Indian feast. 

From the restaurant’s blue awning hangs a garland of dried mango leaves arranged like upside-down flower bouquets framing the large front window. Inside, patrons sit on nondescript black chairs, using their fingers to nimbly tear and fold pieces of dosa to dunk into bowls of sambaar. For, as the restaurant’s name suggests, that savory South-Indian staple, the dosa, and all its permutations, is the draw at Sri Ganesh’s Dosa House.

Dosas are thin and crispy high-protein crepes made from a batter of rice and lentil or rice and whole wheat flour. They can be as delicate and long as a roll of wrapping paper- a paper dosa- or lacy with holes – a rava dosa. One can simply order a plain dosa to eat with sambaar, the lentil-based, vegetable studded stew and the chutney, the milky, coconut dip that always come as sides, but dosa fillings are where the fun comes in. Sri Ganesh’s offers over 65 combinations of fillings and it’s easy to see why each table in the restaurant is taken. There’s a dosa for every taste here and, chances are, it’s excellent.

To place our orders, we lined up at the counter that enclosed an open kitchen where we could see women in saris spreading dosa batter in a circular motion. It was difficult to pick only one dish; each option seemed better than the previous, the first seemed better than the last, and the indecisive circle continued. Of course all the standard options were there:  Masala Dosas, featuring a pile of soft, turmeric-tinged potatoes fried with onions, mustard, ginger and chilies; Onion Rava Dosas, polka-dotted with holes and liberally sprinkled with sautéed red onions, and Mysore Dosas, smeared with fiery red chili powder.

There were also varieties I’ve rarely spotted outside of India including a Spring Dosa, a Chinese fusion in which a dosa is tightly wrapped around shredded onions, peppers and noodles, and many varieties of cheese dosas that are wildly popular in India but surprisingly infrequent menu additions at South Indian restaurants in America.

We finally settled on a Rava Butter Onion Chili Coriander Dosa and a Paneer Mixed Vegetable Uttapum, a type of savory pancake, for our dinner, and a Masala Tea, a Madras Coffee, and a platter of Jalebis, syrup-soaked, pretzel-shaped confectionaries, for dessert. We grabbed table number 16- each table has a number which is used to identify the order- and sat to wait.

“Number 16.”  After collecting our dosa and uttapum from the counter, we headed over to a corner where a large hot pot full of sambaar was placed next to napkins, spoons, and disposable bowls. We scooped out sambaar with a deep ladle and grabbed an excess of napkins. Eating dosas is a joyously messy experience with all the dipping involved.

Our Rava dosa was crispy and slightly sweet from the butter (dosas are usually cooked with ghee, or clarified butter) and speckled with dashes of dark green cilantro. It was presented like a gift, folded into a neat rectangle, and so we opened it a bit until we could easily access the savory potatoes at its center. Spicy from the thinly sliced chilis and juicy from the glossy, sautéed onions, our dosa was delicious. In addition to dunking small  parcels of dosa enclosed potato into the coconut chutney and warmly spiced sambaar, we dipped them into the other chutney, which was saucier, with hints of garlic in its sesame base.

The Paneer Mixed Vegetable Uttapum, while a little bland on its own, was a suitable counterpart to the more flavorful dosa. Also made with a lentil and rice batter, uttapums are fluffy underneath a very thin crust, and, if made well, as Sri Ganesh’s was, are wonderfully grease-free.

Our meal ended on a saccharine note: the masala tea had extra sugar; the Madras coffee tasted like the too-sweet instant coffee I am familiar with from visits to India, and the jalebis, those deep-fried confectionaries soaked in syrup, were soft and crunchy with sugar particles instead of crisply dripping with golden sticky syrup. Yet, while sweets might not be their forte, Sri Ganesh’s Dosa House has certainly mastered the savory art of the dosa, and I can picture myself returning again and again, sixty-five times in all, to sample each one.