\begindata{text822, 0} X-Andrew-WideReply: netnews.pgh.food,cmu.cs.general X-Andrew-Authenticated-as: 0;andrew.cmu.edu;Network-Mail Received: via nntpserv with nntp; Sat, 26 Jun 1993 02:07:08 -0400 (EDT) Newsgroups: pgh.food,cmu.cs.general Path: andrew.cmu.edu!bb3.andrew.cmu.edu!crabapple.srv.cs.cmu.edu!acha From: acha@CS.CMU.EDU (Anurag Acharya) Subject: New sources of Indian food (reviews) Message-ID: Originator: acha@DRAVIDO.SOAR.CS.CMU.EDU Sender: news@cs.cmu.edu (Usenet News System) Nntp-Posting-Host: dravido.soar.cs.cmu.edu Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University Distribution: pgh Date: Sat, 26 Jun 1993 01:23:48 -0400 Lines: 62 Xref: bb3.andrew.cmu.edu pgh.food:310 cmu.cs.general:1763 This summer has seen three new sources of Indian food in the Pittburgh area -- a mobile van on Thackeray Av, Delhi Grill on Atwood and Dosa Hut in Penn Hills. Summary reviews: The van is a cheap and reasonable lunch alternative. Its owners should be supported in their attempt to provide cheap Indian food. Delhi Grill is easily the worst Indian restaurant in town. Avoid. Dosa Hut is the only South Indian restaurant in town. It is quite good. And it is cheap. If you are tired of the overcreamed mughlai food that almost all Indian restaurants dish out, make a pilgrimage to this place. There is no place like this between Philadelphia and Detroit. The first to appear was the Indian food van that is parked on Thackeray (opp. Pitt bookstore). This is a low-budget outfit run by a Punjabi couple and caters to the lunch crowd. They have a selection of dishes, but the maximum bang for the buck is provided by their lunch specials. The vegetarian version goes for $2.50 and the non-vegetarian for $3.00. The special consists of a curry and your choice of chapatis (bread) and rice. If you don't have a compulsive need for rice in the middle of the day, go for the chapatis. The chapatis are made fresh while you watch and are a delight. I haven't tried many of the other items on their menu. The raita was ok -- neither better nor worse than what is available in a generic Indian restaurant. A word of caution, avoid the gulabjamun. The price of 40 cents per piece is attractive but their notion of gulabjamun does not jell with any I have come across. I had to throw mine away. It is open betwen 11 am and 2:30 pm. Next on the scene was Delhi Grill. This is on Atwood street, two doors down from India Garden. It is also run by a punjabi family. But that is where the similarity ends. Half a dozen of us ventured out there. We found it was being run by the folks who used to run Vegetarian delight in Penn Hills. That was not a good omen (The stuff dished out at Vegi Delight was quite a sorry excuse for food). It was not a false alarm. Some of tried the dinner buffet, others tried dosas. The buffet table was infrequently visited. The dosa was edible in parts. Avoid like plague. About two weeks ago, Dosa Hut opened in the same location as the now extinct Vegetarian Delight. It is located on the Old Willam Penn highway (in Penn Hills). Some of us had read Anuradha Ramaswami's post on assocs.india-news and had driven down to check it out. It is run by a MBA graduate and his partner. They are still doing up the place, so expect the decor to be a little rough and the service to be a trifle slow, esp. if the place is full. The menu is handwritten and is not very big. But the food is good. We had masala dosa, uttapam, vada, mango shake and gulabjamun. All good. The coconut chutney was good. The sambhar was ok. The gulabjamun was fairly good which is rather unusual for Indian restaurants in the US (my pet peeve about Indian eateries in the US is the sheer lack of good deserts. What I wouldn't give for a good ras malai!). The prices are quite low. Dosas are $3 each and uttapams are $2.50 apiece. Please please support this place. Good South Indian food is quite difficult to come by in these parts. And cheap Indian food is difficult to come by anywhere in the US. Directions from Pittsburgh: take 376 east, take Business 22 exit, take Rodi Road exit (that is, turn left on the first light), take the first right onto Old William Penn Highway, drive quite a while on this, soon after passing under a low bridge, keep a sharp lookout on the left. Dosa Hut is in a small building. Thye don't have their sign yet and the only identification is a small paper sign on the door. But the manager told me this was going to change soon. It is close to the SV temple (for those of you who know where that is). \enddata{text822, 0}