I admire people who have lofty goals. Like trying to attain nirvana in 6 months. Or trying to reform career criminals and politicians. But a few friends and I thought we should leave such efforts to noble souls and instead pursue a baser goal – to find an authentic South Indian restaurant in New York City.

Not as easy as it sounds, since the Big Apple proudly presents plenty of fake Indian eateries. You should be a little suspicious when a restaurant named Gandhi serves bloody beef steaks. Or you accidentally discover that the kitchen of an Andhra restaurant has thick-mustached Mexican cooks running around in confusion. And when your sambhar is little more than carelessly boiled lentils or your rasam turns out to be watered-down, spiced-up tamarind sauce, you should realize that the ‘Pure Vegetarian Indian Restaurant’ you are sitting in is probably a Bangla Deshi establishment in disguise.

There are dozens of generic non-vegetarian restaurants like Windows On India , Curry In A Hurry and Mirchi in the Big Apple, and for your gastronomic pleasure they will serve up an improvised, cross-cultural Indian cuisine. But our quest was for a more home-styled Southern taste.

By accident rather than a rigorous search process we found Pongal, where the dosas were crispy and the idlis soft, instead of the other way around. The chef turned out to be a young man who had come from Tamil Nadu to paint religious icons on the walls of the Hindu Temple at Flushing, an Indian-prone area of New York City. But this gig was over sooner than he had anticipated, after which he had been left with two choices – either return home with a few dollars in his pocket or find another job immediately. Luckily his resume claimed that not only was he adept at creating divine wall art, but he could also cook anything except for books. And so he had hastily dropped his paint brushes and taken up kitchen utensils, to the delight of discerning customers.

But all good things come to an end, and Pongal changed drastically within months. Not only had the food gone from palate-worthy to unpalatable, but the prices had also progressed from thin-budget to fat-wallet levels. For one thing, the cook had left due to ‘problems’ with the management. But the shenanigans of the management did not just stop with firing the cook and raising prices. They had introduced harsh new policies like charging a fee for providing ‘doggie-bag’ containers. When we explained to our waiter that this must be the only restaurant in the entire civilized world which charged a fee for take-home containers, he became quite agitated with excitement. He desperately beckoned a few of his colleagues to our table, and they all eagerly requested us to lodge a complaint against the management, the head waiter even producing a complaint book that was full of assorted customer complaints. Apparently the employees themselves were unhappy with the new management policies and were collecting complaints from irate customers as though they were procuring rare coins. But newer and better restaurants beckoned so we never did find out the outcome of the Pongal management-employee battle.

Madras Palace was another great encounter of the vegetarian kind. Its owner had made a ton of money in the perfume business. Apparently all you have to do is import cheap perfumes from India or Pakistan, slap on fake labels, set up shop in New York City, and you get rich. But acting on a friend’s advice, this gentleman unquestioningly gave up his good scents and his good sense to invest in the food business.

But whether he had good sense or not, he at least had two energetic twin sons, who were capable of running around busily, taking orders, serving dishes, cleaning up after sloppy customers, purchasing supplies and even taking over the kitchen when the chef was nursing a hangover. But since these twins looked exactly alike and even dressed exactly alike in white shirt and black trousers, they would thoroughly confuse customers. One of them was quite gregarious and chatty while the other was quiet and sullen, so only after a customer was greeted with either a broad smile or a glaring stare could he or she differentiate between the right or wrong brother. And the manager, obviously hired for his passable English speaking skills, appeared to be someone who had come to the USA with high hopes and big dreams. Since the main dining was in the basement, he would stand sadly near the bottom of the staircase, forlornly looking up at the entrance above, probably hoping for a chance to escape into his version of a lavish and lascivious America.

But the problem with Madras Palace was that the dishes were unpredictable from day to day. The food varied from taste-of-home good to let’s-go-to-another-restaurant bad. The reason, as we later learned, was because the cook was absent often, either protesting his low pay or freelancing at other restaurants. So we had no choice but to look beyond for better eateries.

And conveniently nearby was Dosa Hut, where the thali meals were enjoyable from Appetizer to Zarda paan. The place also featured rare delicacies like rasa vadai. But unfortunately here too we experienced a few unnerving incidents. Once, after a hearty meal, we were about to enjoy our rava kesari, the dessert of the day. But without warning, an elderly Sri Lankan waiter literally ran to our table and hurriedly swooped up the rava kesari dishes, muttering something about having given us the ‘wrong sweet’. Soon after that, he brought us cups of payasam as an alternate dessert. Puzzled and at a loss for words, our imaginations ran amok. Did a clumsy, small and furry animal fall and commit suicide in the kesari pot? Did poisonous lead paint or pieces of cracking asbestos ceiling fall into the dish? One of the better theories was postulated by my friend Anu, who was sure that an angry, underpaid cook had gotten drunk and purposefully poisoned the kesari to take revenge on the management for mistreating him. In my mind, this triggered an idea for a Christie-like murder mystery where the South Indian detective, Hercule Packianathan, dramatically states in the last chapter, “The poison was not in the payasam, hence the murderer must be..”

But all these foodventures happened a few decades ago, when I still lived in New York City. Today there are pure’n’sure, karmically authentic vegetarian Bhavans in the Big Apple, like Saravana and Adyar Anand. But in spite of the spate of high profile establishments, next time I am there, I still plan to prowl around Jackson Heights or Lexington Avenue, searching for that undiscovered, tucked away, corner South Indian restaurant with welcoming wafts of flavourful fragrances and immigrant dreams.

But finding alternate employment meant that he would have to reapply for a work visa, a process that usually reduces a person to a hand-trembling, knee-shaking bundle of nerves. First you have to find a new sponsor. Then you have to submit passport copies, letter of appointment, old employment records, bank balance statements, tax payment receipts, family documents, birth and marriage certificates (or lack thereof), old visa copies and testimonials from upstanding citizens. And last but not least, you will be microscoped by the police, FBI, Homeland Security and ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement).

Windows on India was a great place. They compete with each other, one boasting of annoying recorded music, while the next would feature annoying live music, the musicians looking unhappy and bored, playing to each other, the scared waiters and one or two patrons.
That would shock your senses with insensitive nonsense.

It is said that from the day you begin working, even you go for dinner to a different restaurant each night, you will still not be able to visit all the restaurants in New York City during your lifetime. This is because so many restaurants keep coming up every so often. Also there are restaurants from all countries of the world.

But Dosa Hut apparently suffered from a tiny identity crisis, for below the main name, written in lesser letters, was the title Saravana Bhavan. Initially we thought that this was a branch of the popular restaurant chain, and the Telugu-speaking gentleman behind the cashier’s counter even claimed that indeed they had an affiliation with said restaurant group. But on our second visit, we spoke to his wife who admitted frankly that no, they had nothing to do with the group, they had just borrowed the name since it was so popular among South Indians.