It was a lot of fun and we covered a lot of ground. You can listen to it here.

Today my coworker brought over a handful of Indian treats. I thought it was more jalebi, a red candied dough that I’ve had a number of times before and, in fact, the day before from the same coworker. But instead it was dried mango in amchur, dried and powdered unripe mango. It’s such a rare taste, like citrusy, sweet white pepper.

Have you tried it? Have you had it in any other formats?

Naan, if you don’t know, is a pillowy-soft flat bread baked in a tandoor clay oven. Sometimes made with nuts and raisins or potatoes, onions and spices, but the best bread in my opinion is just plain and soft and dipped in curry (the curry being almost secondary). I am also of the opinion that Tandoori Palace makes the best naan I have ever had.

On a recent visit we were fortunate enough to have a largish group so the chefs took it upon themselves to suggest a menu; lamb dopiaza, tandoori chicken, prawn masala, lamb biryani, channa masala, eggplant bhartha and lots and lots of naan.

I hadn’t had the prawn masala before, and the dopiaza is new, so there were a couple of surprises, but not with the flavours. Complex and complimentary, it is not overly spicy but everything tastes great. And almost everything fits snugly into a hand-held naan pocket.

I’ve reviewed the House of Dosas twice before so I’m loath to do it again, but they’ve introduced a special on Tuesdays that I can’t not write about. The Thali plate kicks ass with no less than 13 mini dishes in colours ranging from hot pink to lime green and flavours as diverse as sweet coconut and spicy pickle for $9.99.

This is the only place in Vancouver that I know of that’s serving traditional cuisine from the region of Kerala. On one metal plate you’ll find (among other specialties) chutney, dhal, curried cauliflower, yogurt with roasted chilis and chapati, pappadum and rice to mop it all up. It’s all vegetarian, so if you need a meat fix, get an order of chicken 65 but be warned that you’ll be very full.

In other exciting news, House of Dosas is now open 24 hours for your late night dosa cravings.

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House of Dosas
1391 Kingsway, Vancouver

Photo Credit: ecstaticist.

So I’ve dedicded to start a new project for dining in 2010. The tagline of this site is “Sampling the World’s Cuisine Without Leaving Vancouver” and so instead of of traipsing around Vancouver’s culinary delights in the random way I have been for the last (almost) 2 years, I am going to present my finds country by country.

I still have a bit of a backlog of reviews, so I may post those interspersed with the project and if I feel really keen, I may even post some recipes.

First stop on the grand tour: North America. Got any favorites you’d like to recommend?

A couple of years ago my friends introduced me to dosas and I couldn’t get enough of them. Curry rolled up in a crêpe? That’s two of my favorite things for the price of one and I went back to the Southern Indian dish over and over again until I had tried a representative sample. I’m still a fan, but for some reason lately, they’re popping up again.

My coworkers have recently discovered the House of Dosas and some  friends took me to Madras Dosa House, which I had not been to before and I’ve been happy to re-savour some old favorites.

Chicken 65 (or 66) is a South Indian favorite, even though no one seems to know that the numbers are for. The number of spices? The number of days old the chickens are? The number of days to prepare the marinade? Who knows. It doesn’t matter, just order it.

I had the Spring Masala dosa at Madras Dosa House and the Mixed Meat and Veggie at House of Dosas, but fillings range from spicy to creamy with options for different meats and vegetables. I like the peppery gunpowder dosa with lots of cooling chutneys and my friend prefers the giant paper dosa – extra thin, but almost 2 feet long.

Another friend, Susie, dined at House of Dosas recently and had this to say:

I ordered my favorite, the Palak Panir Alu Dosa (spinach and cheese), and was served piping hot. The dosa pancake and its filling contrast wonderfully in the mouth, mixing the crispy texture of the pancake with the savory filling. My meal came with a lentil soup and a couple of mystery sauces that my inexperienced palette couldn’t identify easily.

Service is understated but there’s nothing wrong with it either – your meal comes quickly and courteously, if in a fairly businesslike manner. The dining room is large enough to accommodate a group meal, and in health-conscious Vancouver, this place is a good choice if you need to accommodate vegetarians. The prices are extremely reasonable; my meal would have been a filling dinner and at $8.99 it hardly broke the bank.

My dining companions also ordered the Chicken 65 appetizer, which was reportedly quite spicy; it had that tell-tale pinkish red that indicates you should have some bread nearby to cut the heat. Since I’m not a big fan of that burning sensation, I let them sample that without me.

All in all, this is what I would call South Indian comfort food, as perfect on a rainy Vancouver day with a little bite in the air to one of those rare winter moments when we have snow. Come hungry, leave full.

see also Crank the Heat in the House of Dosas.

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House of Dosas
1391 Kingsway, Vancouver

Madras Dosa House
5656 Fraser Street, Vancouver

10 best of the Drive:

1. Sausages and whisky at Falconetti’s, a dark, cavey little bar that is also open to the street. Excellent handmade sausages and fries accompany a decent bar selection and good people pouring. 1812 Commercial Drive.
2. Old-school Italian at Arriva Ristorante. The Drive was the original Little Italy and eventhough it’s much more diverse now, this is still the place for authentic carbonara or bucca alla amatriciana. 1537 Commercial Drive.
3. The Ravioli Store for fresh made pasta and Italian prosciutto. 1900 Commercial Drive.
4. South China Seas for spices, hard to find ethnic ingredients and cookbooks. 1904 Grant Street (at Victoria Drive).
5. Coffee from Calabria, Bump & Grind, Prado and Continental. No, sorry, I’m not picking one. They’re all favorites for different reasons; Calabria for making me laugh with its utter cheesiness – 1745 Commercial Drive, Bump & Grind for it’s bohemian furniture and comfy atmosphere – 916 Commercial Drive, Prado for its sleek minimalist decor – 1938 Commercial Drive, and Continental for the smell of roast beans and the undercurrent of revolution – 1806 Commercial Drive.
6. La Grotta del Formaggio for cheese and sandwiches. 1791 Commercial Drive.
7. Tandoori Palace, which is as close as I can get to having a regular haunt. I’ve only ever had their channa masala, but I’ve had it a LOT. Comfort food. 1439 Commercial Drive.
8. Bacon from JN&Z Deli. Enough said.
9. Havana. The food can be hit or miss but the deck, the décor and the pitchers of mojitos will sway you always. 1212 Commercial Drive.
10. Mediterranean Specialty Foods for amazing fresh hummus, spanikopitas, olives and assorted other Greek delicacies. 1824 Commercial Drive.

Not to mention the many fresh produce markets, bakeries and little ethnic eateries lined up for blocks. I’m looking forward to checking out my new neighbourhood, but I have a sneaking suspicion I’ll still be making some trips back to the Drive.

What are your favorites?

I was excited by my find, and bolstered by both the $5 price tag and my recent Saravanaa-Bhavan buffet success, but the fare was incredibly mediocre. The dried-out naan was no match for the thin, runny sauces and rather than being complex and wonderful as the smell suggested, they were flat and flavourless punctuated with chilis. I tried the butter chicken, channa masala, dahl, mater paneer, and declared that for $5 they were at least all edible. Then I tried the soy chunks in curry that were too rubbery to count as food. I should have stopped there but they had kheer for dessert and kheer is on my list of things to try! I get very excited about trying new things, except I think – unless kheer is meany to be a slop of white gluey paste that explodes in your mouth like vineagar hitting baking soda and then sticks there – that I will have to leave it on the list to be tried again elsewhere

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New India Buffet
805 West Broadway, Vancouver

Eating out can be a luxury in a down economy, but it doesn’t have to be. Saravanaa Bhavan’s vegetarian restaurant serves up some of the most authentic Indian food that I’ve had in a while and has a $10 lunch buffet (on weekdays) that can’t be beat.

If you’re willing to forgo the butter chicken, you can load up on all the channa masala and dahl and vegetarian curries your straining waistline can handle. Plus the sauces; various chutneys and raita. Plus the starches; chappathi, pappadum, and naan are all on offer and a server brings freshly made dosas by at regular intervals. So much food! I thought I was going to have to have a nap after lunch.

A couple of things I hadn’t tried before were the lentil doughnuts, sambar vada, and rava kesari which is roasted cream of wheat, sweetened with honey and coloured orange.  A bit of a surprise, to be sure, but must have been good because I went back for seconds.

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Saravanaa Bhavan
955 West Broadway, Vancouver

What’s better than a kick-ass curry? A kick-ass curry stuffed inside a rolled-up crepe, obviously. A specialty of Southern India and Sri Lanka, this delectable dish is called a dosa. It’s basically a pancake made out of rice and fermented lentils filled with curry and served with various chutneys on the side and the place to get them in Vancouver is at the House of Dosas. I’d been there with friends once before, quite a while ago and then it slipped off the radar entirely until an ex-coworker recommended it for a cheap lunch destination.

So good! How did I ever manage to forget about the dosas? At the waiter/owner/proprietor’s suggestion, we ordered 3 dishes to be divied up equally; lamb korma ($12.99), lamb curry dosa ($9.99) and seafood masala dosa -fish, shrimp, and crab ($10.99). And then we threw in an order of vegetable pakoras ($4.99) for good measure.

The prices are reasonable for the amount of food you get, but for a really stellar deal, go on Monday when the dosas are only $5.99 each.

I haven’t really been excited about the food selection around here since I got back from New York, but I started out this meal with a very loud, “MMMMMM!,” and kept it up through the entire meal until I’m sure my dining companions were irritated with me. It was impossible to stop but at least we were so full after the dosas that there was no chance of dessert.

The lamb korma was possibly the best korma I’ve ever had. A little bit sweet with chunks of lamb meat in it, I had ordered it medium spicy and while I normally like things spicy, the creamyness of this dish suited the amount of spice. If you’re sensitive to spicy things, you should be ok here, but even so, it comes with both naan bread and the cripsy, paper-thin pappadums, plus rice and yogurty raita to cool it down. I would have preferred if the seafood dosa (also ordered medium) and the lamb curry dosa (ordered mild) were spicier, so I’ll keep that in mind the next time I’m back. Even without the heat, however, the dosas were delicious. The crepe covering was light and thin and proved to be the perfect medium for housing the generous chunks of curried meat and seafood.  

I also ordered a salted lassi to drink purely so that I could check it off the list, and was pleasantly surprised at the heat-cutting, refreshing yogurty taste of it. Possibly an acquired taste if you’re used to the sweeter mango lassis, but I often find mango too sweet, so I’ll definitely be having the salted one again next time.

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House of Dosas
1391 Kingsway, Vancouver