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| - Excellent vegetarian South Indian food in Pittsburgh.
Not the best South Indian I've ever had. For that I would suggest that you travel to New York and eat at Saravana Bhavan on Lexington Avenue.
If you are in Monroeville/Pittsburgh area though, Udipi can't be beat. We ordered the rasam soup, the appetizer plate, Mysore rava masala dosa and the mixed vegetable uttappam. Since I have a rule not to order North Indian fare in South Indian restaurants (and vice versa), I requested the server to substitute the samosa on the appetizer plate with something else, and he suggested the bonda.
The appetizer platter was HUGE. The idli, vada and bondas were excellent. The pakodas were alright, but hubby loved the fact that they had whole chilli pepper pakodas. The chutneys (green cilantro-sour, brown tamarind-sweet, coconut-savory) were all fresh and really, really good.
The dosa was decent, a near-perfect 8 out of 10 on the thinness-and-crispness scale. The onion-potato stuffing was good.
The sambar, very sambar-ey-salty, sour, hot.
Rasam soup- good, but hard to distinguish from the sambar.
We had to ask them to bag the uttappam for us, which they did with a smile. We had it for breakfast next morning, and it was perfect.
In all, Udipi is up there on my list of South Indian restaurants. They do have quite a bit of North Indian fare on the menu too, though I can't comment on that. Diner-room ambience, restrooms are bare but clean. We would definitely go there again.
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