02/12/2023
A crisp, tubular piece of art: Try a dose of dandy dosa at new Kitchener eatery
The dosa arrives at your table with a nutty, cakey flavour and immensely satisfying crisp, especially around its scalloped edges, writes
From photos I’ve seen, I can easily imagine the architecture of Hong Kong Fashion plaza, its stairs, walkways, railings and scattered businesses located in east end Kitchener, fitting into a street scene in Tamil Nadu, the southern India state.
Occupying one of the plaza units facing King Street is Jayalakshmi South Indian Cuisine, open now for about one month.
Named for his mother, the restaurant is Vikram Subramanian’s first foray into the industry – a path that took him away from his electrical engineering studies at Montreal’s Concordia University.
His passion for food, recent lineups that have formed at the restaurant’s door and a phalanx of returning regular customers seem to have justified the career divergence.
The relatively stark dining room, with some art and a combination of tables and booths, has the potential for an 80-seat capacity. Subramanian continues to build out the space – including plans to set up a summer patio down a flight of stairs to the square below.
The space on his menu, he says, captures the cooking and flavours of Tamil Nadu and the people who live there.
“The food at Jayalakshmi is the food from my city, Coimbatore, and my region. It has a unique style,” Subramanian says.
“There is no butter chicken here,” he adds with a slight smile and gentle poke.
Among dishes such as idly, a rice-and-lentil flour steamed cake; spongy, fermented lentil-rice utthappam “pancakes;” quite delicious, chewy south Indian parotta bread and Chettinad dum biryanis, there is a page of nearly two dozen dosas – the object of my visits.
The dosa, in fact, has seen a bump in popularity in Waterloo Region, with the appearance of several small chains like Dosa Twist in the last year or so.
An overnight ferment of in-house ground dal, lentil and rice flour forms a batter that is applied to the hot griddle, interestingly, with an inverted tea cup and swirled in larger and larger concentric circles as it cooks.
Slowly, the dosa darkens to a pocked and dimpled golden brown, and the cook, Raman, using a tool you might find in a drywaller’s kit, carefully peels the crisp crepe-like disk off the flattop and folds it gently.
The result is a crisp, half-moon or tubular piece of art the size of which is barely contained by the tray on which it is served. And delicious too.
What I’d describe as an “evolving” dish, the dosa arrives at your table with a nutty, cakey flavour and immensely satisfying crisp, especially around its scalloped edges.
Then, as it sits and cools, areas of the dosa become pleasantly chewy.
Accompanying chutneys are distinctively flavoured: tomato, coconut and sambar – lentils and “drumsticks,” the latter moringa, a native Indian plant that looks a bit like okra and a bit like a green bean.
Named for the southern city in Karnataka state, Mysore masala dosa, a vegetarian dish, is stuffed with a blend of soft potatoes, onions, coriander and other spices.
I also tried Jayalakshmi’s parotta, Chettinadu chicken curry (what the menu refers to as “gravy”) and Chettinadu chicken dum biriyani, all quite good (and at medium heat spicy enough for me).
Raman prepares ingredients daily; Subramanian says cooking these dishes requires precise attention to detail and timing, a requirement, of course, of many other cuisines.
But in the case of a Jalayakshmi dosa, it clearly pays off.
“You can’t miss adding the salt at the right time. It’s not a matter of adding 30 grams of this or that ingredient,” Subramanian says. “It requires knowing the heat, tasting and checking the texture at the right time. If not, the flavour changes.”
Reffrence link :https://www.waterloochronicle.ca/opinion-story/10831301-a-crisp-tubular-piece-of-art-try-a-dose-of-dandy-dosa-at-new-kitchener-eatery/
