If you have ever eaten at a South Indian restaurant in Irving or Richardson, you have probably watched one go by. A golden, crackly crepe so long it hangs off both ends of the plate, rolled around a filling, with little steel cups of soup and chutney lined up beside it. That’s a dosa, and once you understand what you’re looking at, the menu stops being intimidating.
The dosa comes from South India, where it’s everyday breakfast food, eaten the way Texans eat a breakfast taco. Here it’s served all day.
The secret is the batter. Rice and urad dal, a small white lentil, are soaked, ground and left to ferment overnight, which gives it a light sourness similar to sourdough. The cook spreads it paper-thin on a hot griddle with a little oil or ghee, and in a minute or two it turns crisp and brown on the bottom. Since it’s rice and lentils, a classic dosa has no wheat.
Start with the masala dosa, filled with soft potatoes cooked with onion, turmeric, mustard seeds and curry leaves. It’s the one every South Indian kitchen in town is judged on. A paper dosa is extra thin and extra long, a ghee roast is brushed with clarified butter until deep gold, and a Mysore masala dosa adds a smear of red chile chutney for heat. Rava dosa is made with semolina instead, so it cooks up lacy and full of holes.
It comes with sambar, a tangy lentil and tamarind stew for dipping, and coconut chutney, often with a tomato chutney too. Tear off a piece with your right hand, grab some potato, dip and eat. A fork works, but hands are how it’s done at home.
Here are three good places in North Texas to try one.
Simply South at 1001 MacArthur Park Drive in Irving opened in 2024 in an old Tex-Mex building off LBJ and became a phenomenon almost immediately. The all-vegetarian kitchen cooks in the style of Andhra Pradesh, a region known for food with real heat, and the menu runs to roughly 200 items. That same year The New York Times put it on its list of the 50 best restaurants in America, the only North Texas spot to make the cut. Expect a crowd on Sunday. Simply South has since added locations in Frisco and McKinney if Irving is a haul.
Saravanaa Bhavan is the name South Indian families look for when they move to a new city. The chain started in Chennai in 1981 and is still family run, and it now has outposts around the world. It came to Texas in 2012 with a location in Irving, added Plano, and opened its newest DFW spot at 3551 Wilshire Way, Suite 100, in Richardson’s CityLine development. The cooking is classic Tamil Nadu vegetarian, the dining rooms are no-frills, and the masala dosa with its trio of chutneys is the order. If you want to see a paper dosa arrive at the table hanging off both ends of the plate, this is a good place to do it.
Gopal Vegetarian Restaurant at 125 S. Central Expressway in Richardson has been open since 1991, which makes it one of the old hands of the local Indian dining scene. It’s small, with only about a dozen tables, and it cooks Gujarati food from western India alongside the South Indian standards, so you can order a dosa and a Gujarati thali at the same table. It’s cheap, it’s family style, and it has outlasted a lot of flashier places. Call ahead at 214-716-0651 to check hours.
Start with a masala dosa, add a rava dosa for the table, and keep the sambar coming. After one meal you’ll be reading the dosa section of any menu in town like a regular.
