Udipi Café

With prices this low and spices so tantalizing, it’s hard to keep from ordering everything on the menu.

By: Faith Bahadurian
   I’d been meaning to try Udipi Café for most of the six or so years since it opened in Franklin Park. Friends have been enthusiastic about its vegetarian South Indian cuisine, and they did not lead me astray. Owner Vasant Rao has a second location in Parsippany, and with his family owns restaurants in several other states as well that exemplify the delicious cuisine of the temple town of Udipi (or Udupi) bordering the Arabian Sea in southwestern India.

   The Franklin Park restaurant is in one of the strip malls along Route 27, but on a balmy evening the door was ajar, and delicious smells wafted out to greet us. Strings of twinkling snowflakes and tiny red holiday lights in the front window also beckoned us inside where we were promptly welcomed and seated by Jyospna Nair, she of the dazzling smile, flowing hair and golden sari reflected in the saffron-colored walls.
   Aside from those quirky lights, the décor is simple, a bit bare bones with tile floor, wood tables and paper napkins. Serving pieces are stainless steel or beige plastic, but we had nice water goblets and a pitcher of ice water all to ourselves.
   Our meal started with complementary stainless cups of rasam, peppery tomato-based hot and sour soup. This version was more hot than sour, but not too hot for us Westerners. The mid-week night we were at Udipi Café there was a constant flow of Indian couples and families, but no other Westerners. We were pleased to be treated like everyone else, and not singled out for constant questioning as to how spicy we liked our food. We took it as it came; if it had been toned down for us, it was still spicy enough to please, without putting us on the spot.
   Things really took off as the procession of dishes we ordered started arriving. We ordered the appetizer assortment ($6.25) which includes meduvada (a lentil "donut"), mysore bonda (a lentil dumpling), samosa (pastry stuffed with potato), veggie cutlet (minced vegetable patty with spices) and pakora (battered vegetables). Although all of these were deep fried, there was little oil to be found on them, and they were well complemented by the usual trinity of chutneys that adorn Indian appetizers — coconut, tamarind, and cilantro-mint.
   We may have ordered too many dishes from the rest of the menu, so eager was I to introduce my friend to this cuisine. But when prices top out at $6.99, it’s hard to resist the urge to add just one more. First we tried two kinds of crepes. The exterior of the classic masala dosa ($5.49), a rolled crepe made with fermented rice and lentil batter, was as crisp as could be with its somewhat fluffy potato, onion and nut filling.
   But the real winner of this round was the darker-toned pesarattu upma ($6.49), a mung-bean crepe filled with soft cream of wheat (fine semolina, the "upma" part of the name), onions and spicy slivered green chilies. This was just delicious. Both dosas came with stainless bowls of raitha, the cooling yogurt sauce, and more rasam.
   Our next round was two vegetarian curries. Baigan bhartha ($6.99), one of a small selection of north Indian dishes on the menu, was made from roasted eggplant mashed up with onion, peas and intense spices. To us, the seasoning somewhat obscured the eggplant flavor we’d been looking forward to. More to our liking was the gobi masala curry ($6.49), made with chunks of cauliflower with "special spices" that seemed to have just a touch of sweetness. Curries come with plain basmati rice and pickles and the night of our visit the pickle included chunks of lemon that perfectly offset the richness of the sauces.
   There was one more dish, however, that I could not resist trying, and it turned out to be a favorite. Lemon rice ($5.49) was an explosion of flavor with green peas, kare (or kari, curry) leaves, and the smoldering flavors of sizzled spices and browned cashews. The dish came with two ethereal crispy pappadums (lentil crisps), and never have I tasted so much flavor packed into a rice dish.
   After all that (and a lot of it came home with me), there was no room for any of the rich sweet desserts typically offered in an Indian restaurants. Instead, we split a cooling yogurt mango lassi ($2.49), bought to us by the gracious Ms. Nair in separate goblets. It was the perfect ending to a delicious Indian vegetarian experience.