Varanasi TA #2 is Dosa Cafe. It was a quiet evening and slightly chilly. From the inside seats you can see locals, tourists and cows wander past. It's an unsual restaurant in that it specialises in lots of different types of street foods. Each type of street food has a lot of different options from basic to what I can only describe as attempted fusion.
In any case each serve is small, meaning you can try one of each.
- Masala Vada (savoury fritter prepared with chickpea dal & spices, deep fried) - nice salty and satisfying snack;
- Vegetarian Idli (savoury cake from steamed batter of fermented black lentils & rice) served with coconut sauce & sambar - I think the fried version would have been more my taste as the steamed version was similar to a very bland type of Asian bao;
- Masala Dosa (fermented crepe from rice batter & black lentils) stuffed with mashed potato, ginger, garlic, carrot, green peas, onion, tomato, peanuts & spices - the restaurant namesake is a large, thin crispy triangle of pastry. It was fine but looks more impressive than it was satisfying to me;
- Cheese Spinach Sweet Corn Uttapam (thick pancake cooked in batter) topped with fresh spinach paste, sweet corn, cumin seeds, ginger & mozzarella cheese - this Indian pizza was actually quite nice. A thick, soft, doughy base with nice toppings of your choice.
Next time I would order probably one of each of those again, except the idli would be a fried type and a different dosa just for the textural variety. I wanted to try upma also (thick porridge cooked in ghee) but I think I'd been over-ghee'd and this would tip me over.