Komala Vilas: Real Indian Breakfast Food in the Heart of Singapore

Komala Vilas Restaurant
76/78 Serangoon Road
Singapore 217981
Tel: +65 6293 6980



Singapore's Little India neighborhood.

I love South Indian breakfast food, I really, really do. Started when I lived in Bangalore in college and has persisted ever since, coming to a boil whenever I go back to India (like last year). The rarity of good dosas, vadas, uttapham and other AM Indian delicacies in places not India kills me inside. Phnom Penh does have a pretty good little dosa-slinging joint, but it's not quite the same. Thus, I was very happy to come across Komala Vilas in Singapore's Little India, a restaurant that effectively transports you to a busy morning somewhere near Bangalore or Chennai.



We had a rava masala dosa, an Indian crepe made with semolina flour and stuffed with potatoes, fried onions, green chili and spices. Like most South Indian breakfast items, it's served on a steel plate with small cups of tomato and coconut chutneys and sambar, South India's ubiquitous tamarind vegetable stew. You eat with your hands, ripping the dosa apart and dipping it in the little cups of flavor: it's really pretty perfect. Would only be enhanced by the addition of a smidgen of melted cheese - why can't you find a cheese dosa outside India?



We sampled an uttapam as well, a pancake with red onion and chili mad with a fermented rice and daal batter. Uttapam is in essence a thick, flat variant on the dosa and is eaten with the hands in approximately the same way: the red onions weren't too sharp and made a nice counterpoint to the sambar.



Komala Vilas also does excellent, flaky, hot samosas, which are served with chutney and provide a spicy, interesting AM departure from a boring ol' crossiant. Great with chai tea, but everything is. There's also fresh juices and good, strong, super sweet South Indian coffee on offer, just like I fondly remember it.

Komala Vilas has been doing its thing since 1947, serving cheap and simple South Indian breakfast items to a diverse crowd of Singaporeans. It's a bit of a zoo on weekends, but the people watching is, to me, a real perk - you can pour your tea from saucer to cup and listen to the cacophony all around you. "Quiet" and "Indian" don't go together. Saunter down the street after breakfast, buy some knock-off junk and tasty food products in the Indian run shops on Serangoon road, and pop your head into the Hindu temple if you're feeling nostalgia for the subcontinent. This is the fun part of Singapore.

Dosa Corner Phnom Penh - South Indian food in...Cambodia

Dosa Corner
Rue Pasteur (Street 51), #5, near entrance to Street 278.
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
# 5012673276
Delivery? Yes.



I've spent some time in Southern India over the past few years. The first time, I was 19 years old and working for a dysfunctional music magazine in Bangalore - the second time I was just passing through. My main impression of Southern India is that the people are nice, the scenery is delightfully tropical, and the food is awesome. It's a real mystery to me why South Indian cuisine hasn't taken off in the USA like the heavier, meatier food of India's north. It's lighter then Northern Indian food, mostly vegetarian, and is (usually) a bit more delicately spiced - and there are a dizzying array of regional variations from state to state throughout the massive area that encompasses India's south. The most iconic dish of Southern India would be, naturally, the dosa, a kind of crepe made from fermented mung bean flour. The dough is spilled out onto a flat grill in the same fashion as a crepe, and then it's (usually) filled with something - most commonly a spiced potato and onion mixture. However, there are roughly a bazillion ways to cook a dosa, varying by region, taste, and what yer mama made when you were a little kid on the coffee plantation (or whatever).




Needless to say, I was happy to find that there's a spot to get a dosa right here in Phnom Penh. It's South Indian run, as evidenced by the menu that covers a pretty healthy array of Southern Indian foodstuffs. They've got a bunch of varieties of dosa, including palak dosa, rava dosa made with semolina, and masala dosa with egg. They've got uttapams (flat South Indian pancakes), vadas (spicy Indian doughnuts), sambar idlis (rice cakes with spicy soup) and even ghee pongal (a kind of nutty rice dish). It's enough to warm the heart of any lonely South Indian expat in Cambodia. There's a couple of lunch-time South Indian thalis on offer, some South Indian-style meat dishes like chili chicken and praw pepper fry, and some good ol' Mughali style curries for those who just can't bring themselves to do the dosa thing. And yes, there's pretty good chai and coffee. These are essential.

The first time I came here, I ordered a masala dosa but somehow managed to convince the Khmer waitress that I wanted it to go. This meant it got brought out to me imprisoned in styrofoam, and by the time I'd communicated that I was actually interested in eating in, the damn thing was cold. A cold dosa is not a particularly pleasant thing. I decided I'd come back.

I returned recently and ordered a mushroom masala dosa. Thankfully, this came out hot and on one of those nice steel plates Southern Indians are so partial to. It's a pretty worthy effort, though it could have been a *little* hotter. The masala mixture inside with mushroom was nicely spiced and there was plenty of it. They've got a good handle on sambar, South India's mainstay spicy soup with potato, tomato, and a ton of spices, and the tomato and coconut chutneys are freshly made and excellent. You're supposed to eat a dosa with your hands, dipping it in the tomato, cilantro, and coconut chutneys according to whim. They'll bring you out a big plate of the tomato chutney if you ask for it. Which I did.




I had the non-veg thali today and thought it was pretty good, and definitely similar to standard fare in South India. You get three vegetables, curd (better this time then last time,) a small pot of chicken curry, rice, chapati, and a papad, along with some pickle. I especially enjoyed the stir-fried beet, which was a new one for me. The carrots and finely chopped green beans are very Andhra Pradesh - I need to ask where the owners are from. Chicken curry was also good too, if not spicy enough, and featured actual chunks of meat instead of the bone and gristle often found in India. $5.00 and it'll fill you up. (There was a fascinating discussion going on over at the next table regarding love, mistrust, and cross-cultural relations between Indian and Cambodian, but I guess I shouldn't go into too much detail. But it was awesome. "STOP WITH YOUR LIES!!")

It's a tiny little restaurant with only a few tables, but they deliver everywhere in Phnom Penh. There's always a large number of South Indian expats chowing down here. Go figure.

Dosa on Fillmore: Southern Indian Food? Yes!

Dosa on Fillmore
1700 Fillmore Street,
San Francisco
(415) 441-3672

Dosa, a trendy Southern Indian restaurant already popular in San Francisco's Mission District, recently opened a second location on Fillmore. We decided to visit the new location for lunch recently, finding ourselves struck with a sudden urge for out-of-the-ordinary Indian food in an airy and attractive setting.

So what's the big deal about Southern Indian food? Well, it's drastically underappreciated in the USA. I spent some time in Bangalore and other locales in Southern India, and the food in these balmy stretches of the Subcontinent is very different from the heavy, meaty dishes of the North. What most Americans consider to be "Indian" food is actually northern Indian food - this is because most Indian immigrants to the United States hail from the Punjab region of India or more Northerly climes. Southern Indian food differs from its northern counterparts in a few drastic ways. It's much more vegetarian oriented then the food of the north, and is more reliant upon fish and seafood then it is upon lamb and chicken. It is a cuisine that depends heavily on rice, coconut, and chili, lending it a flavor that is more reminescent of foods associated with Southeast Asia then with India proper. This seafood-heavy and coconut milk loving style of cooking is especially predominant in Kerala, India's lovely southernmost region.

So why is Dosa called, well, Dosa? Easy. Southern India's most popular dish is the dosa, a large rolled pancake made of rice and black lentils. One can order a dosa just about everywhere in Southern India, usually filled with a mixture of spiced potatoes and vegetables. Dosas are usually served with sambar, a broth made of tamarind and toor dal, and a variety of chutneys, usually derived from cilantro or coconut. Dosas are by far Southern India's most popular 5:00 in the morning drinking binge snack, in case you found yourself in a pinch. Dosas come in a startling array of cooking techniques, flavors, and fillings, and it's that versatility that Dosa's menu capitalizes on.



We started with the chickpea channa (garbanzo bean salad) with onions and cherry tomatoes in a spiced lemon dressing - an interesting Indian riff on a typical salad. I never encountered anything much like this in India- a country with really terrifyingly bad water doesn't tend to eat a lot of salad - but this was a refreshing and delicately crunchy dish.

We sampled the rasam or "fire broth" as well, which is simply Dosa's version of a very common Southern Indian soup of tomatoes, tamarind, and lentils. It's a nice and authentic tasting variant on a staple food in the region, and I liked it very much.



Next up were Dahi Puris ($6.00), which are a very common street snack or chaat in the district of Maharashtra. These beauties were made with puris, a kind of puffy, crispy Indian fried bread. They're then filled with tart yogurt and a couple of varieties of chutney. Dahi puri is an excellent combination of creamy, crunchy, spicy and sweet all at once in the grand tradition of Indian snacks, and it's nice to be able to get these things in a more salubrious environment then a Mumbai street-stand. Though nothing really comes close to an evening on Chowpatty Beach with the sun going down, women in saris striding down the beach, and the dulcet tones of stray dogs fighting behind you as you enjoy your afternoon snack. Good old India.



This is a "spring" masala dosa made with the standard spiced potato filling and a variety of fresh vegetables. I was disappointed to find that this was more of a burrito-type dosa and not the gigantic plate spanning beast I generally think of when I contemplate dosa - the restaurant needs to make this plain on the menu. However, the bready, gently spicy flavor of the dosa came through nicely, and the crisp vegetables provided a nice counterpoint to the usual potatoes. I was very taken with the restaurant's version of sambar. It immediately filled me with food nostalgia for the stuff I used to eat almost daily in Southern India, and I considered (and should have) ordering another bowl. It came with some nice, fresh coconut chutney and a slightly sweet and tasty tomato chutney. You can order additional chutney varieties if you're a chutney freak like yours truly, and I enjoyed the eggplant and tamarind variants very much.

Dosa usually does offer one meat-based dish a day (as well as some chicken rolled sandwiches) during lunch, and today's special was baingan bhartha, a dish made with chicken and lots of spiced eggplant, served with yellow rice. This was nicely done and reminiscent of the stuff I used to eat at Punjabi dhabas, although it could have been more spicy. I imagine the kitchen can easily up the chili quotient if you ask first. Southern Indian food isn't really known for knocking you on your ass with spices anyway. I didn't encounter much in the way of truly spicy food in India - rather heavily spiced dishes - and I suspect the macho Anglo-Indians of old began the beloved British tradition of curries so hot that they can kill at five feet. But that is theory. I also am not big on lime pickles, which are typically used to add assertive heat to curries and other things.

After a couple of nice enough passion-fruit bellinis and an Indian spiced bloody mary (not my cup of tea, but my dad liked it well enough), we paid up and were on our way, smelling vaguely of Indian spices for the rest of the day. In my book, that's a good thing. Now if only some enterprising specimen would open a mobile chaat truck or two in downtown San Francisco. Takers?