A Rare Taste of Southern India

South Indian food is inexplicably neglected in Los Angeles. Spicy, fresh and inventive, it should be just as popular as northern Indian food, or even more so, because of its ingenious vegetarian dishes. There are some south Indian restaurants, such as the venerable Dasaprakash chain, and some north Indian places have started serving the crisp south Indian crepe called dosai. But now we have a south Indian restaurant, Udupi Palace, that’s so good there’s often a line for tables.

Udupi is a temple city in the south Indian state of Karnataka. People from there migrated to Bombay, where they began to open Udupi-style restaurants. The owner of Udupi Palace is Uday Shetty, who was born in Udupi.

“They certainly have the authentic taste. I can tell you that,” exclaimed one pleased Indian customer. She had been lunching on a dosai, the steamed cakes called idlis, a cauliflower curry and uthappam, which looks like a fat pizza with the vegetable topping on the inside.

Your eyes will pop when Udupi Palace’s paper dosai emerges from the kitchen, because it’s more than a yard long--longer than the tables are wide. The batter is cooked on an 8-foot griddle and loosely rolled when it sets. You break off chunks of the crisp tube, and eat them with lentil and vegetable soup (sambar) and coconut chutney, which also accompany idlis. On very special occasions, the restaurant will produce an 8-foot dosai, which takes three people to carry.

More modest in size is the spring dosai, which is lined with spicy sauce and folded around a mixture of potatoes and grated vegetables. It’s sliced into manageable portions for serving.

Idlis, made from fermented rice and lentils, are so tender and light they make an ideal breakfast dish. Ordinary idlis are white and unseasoned, but on weekends the restaurant produces bright yellow Kanchipuram idlis that contain cashews, ginger and other spices. The texture is like soft corn bread.

If you are not familiar with south Indian food, order the Palace special thali at lunch or one of the dinner thalis. These bring you an assortment of foods arranged in separate containers on a stainless steel tray. My Palace special was sambar, a thin, spicy broth called rasam, soupy yellow lentils, two vegetable dishes, plain rice, yellow rice (with cashews, fried lentils and spices), yogurt raita, a little container of pickles, a chapati bread and a rice pudding strongly flavored with cardamom. The vegetable dishes were avial, mixed vegetables in coconut sauce, and porial, a dry mixture of vegetables, lentils and grated coconut.

Scanning the menu, you’ll find appetizers such as cashew pakoras (deep-fried fritters) and samosas, soups (mulligatawny, tomato), a long list of dosais and idlis, vadas (yet another lentil-based snack), rice dishes, and vegetarian curries.

Uthappam comes with a choice of additions, such as onions and chiles, tomatoes and peas and mixed vegetables. Rice dishes you won’t find in northern restaurants include bagala bhath, rice mixed with yogurt, lentils and mustard seeds. The rice for bise bele bhath is cooked with red lentils, tamarind, vegetables, peanuts and a special masala that contains coconut.

The quintessential southern dessert is payasam, fine noodles in sweetened milk with nuts and raisins. One weekend, the restaurant experimented with moong dal payasam, replacing the noodles with mung beans. The outcome seemed more like a vegetable side dish with sugar added than a dessert.

For a rich dessert, try badam halwa, a warm gruel of ground almonds cooked with milk and sugar, or carrot halwa, shredded carrots prepared the same way. Sheera, a startlingly orange farina dessert, contains cashews and saffron threads.

Udupi Palace serves authentic south Indian coffee. The strong, aromatic extract is brewed in a filter pot, combined with hot milk and sugar, and poured from one container to another to make it foamy. Udupi Palace omits the sugar so you can add it to taste, but uses genuine southern coffee from Karnataka.

BE THERE

Udupi Palace, 18635 Pioneer Blvd., Artesia. (562) 860-1950. Open noon to 10 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday; closed Monday. No alcohol. Lot and street parking. Visa, American Express, Mastercard. Vegetarian food only. Dinner for two, food only, $16 to $22.

What to get: Palace special thali, paper dosai, spring dosai, Kanchipuram idli, bisi bele bhath, bagala bhath, badam halwa, Mysore coffee.