Alright, let’s get back to New Jersey. As you may recall, I made a quick trip to New Jersey and New York in mid-May. My meals out included three Indian meals and one that was not Indian. This is not a report on the non-Indian one; it’s a report on the last of the three Indian meals (see here for my report on dinner at Bombay Bistro in the West Village, and here for my report on lunch at Pakvaan Desi Spice in Edison). I ate it with a dear old friend and his family (and visiting relatives). The original plan had been to eat at a Pakistani restaurant. However, I was going to be cooking a big Bengali meal for them all that night—with mutton and fish on the menu—and so we decided to keep lunch vegetarian. Accordingly, we ended at a restaurant named Dosa Grill in North Brunswick. Here’s how it went.

As you might expect from the name, the restaurant’s specialty is, broadly speaking, South Indian food, and particularly dosas, of which they offer a fair number of varieties (thankfully, none are actually grilled). The restaurant is large and was not exactly doing roaring business at lunch on the Thursday of our visit. But to stay in business as a large restaurant in the heart of brownness that is this part of New Jersey they must doubtless be doing well at other times.

We were a party of six adults. Between us we ate a good cross-section of the non-curry section of the menu: in addition to a few South Indian veg curries they also serve some North Indian restaurant veg all-stars; yes, it’s a vegetarian restaurant. But, as I say, we didn’t get any of that. We got a bunch of starters to share: idly (decent), medu vada (better), vada in sambar (likewise) and a plate of pakoras (quite nice). We then got a main each to ourselves. Five of us got dosas. On the table were one each of the following: onion rava masala dosa, gunpowder dosa (for the Hyderabadi in the party), Chettinad masala dosa (this was mine), a regular masala dosa, and a ghee roast masala dosa. The sixth member of the party got a tomato-onion-chilli uttapam.

How were the dosas? On the whole, I would say they were decent, if not as good as you might hope for from a place in New Jersey with Dosa in its name. The best of the lot were probably the regular and ghee roast masala dosas. My Chettinad masala dosa was just a little too heavy on the Chettinad masala for my taste. Of the accompaniments, the sambar was quite nice; the coconut chutney was uninspired; I liked the tomato chutney but the two Madrasis in the party thought it was too sweet. Oh yes, some folks had masala chai and coffee to end. I had a glass of buttermilk to start (okay) and another member of the party had a mango lassi (which he liked).

For a look at the restaurant, the menu and what we ate, launch the slideshow below. Scroll down for more.

Service was a little haphazard but nothing to get really exercised about. Prices are reasonable—as you can make out by looking at the menu—but as I was not allowed to touch the bill I cannot tell you how much our meal came to.

On the whole, the meal was fine, if not up to the level of the company. I don’t know that I would suggest anyone go very far out of their way to eat there—I’m sure there are better dosas available in a 30 minute radius—but if you’re in North Brunswick, by all means. If you know the area and can recommend some such places, please do so in the comments. In the meantime, my Minnesotan readers will be gratified to learn that I think we have better dosas available in the Twin Cities metro (at Godavari and Dosa, for example). And if I have any readers from Dublin, they’ll be pleased to know that my dosa at Dosa Dosa was superior as well to the one I ate here.

Alright, only more report to come from that trip: a very different kind of affair at Foxface Natural. I might get that out next week. Tomorrow, however, I will have another report from Busan. See you then.