Indian Food in Houston- Madras Pavilion

Today, I had lunch at a South Indian vegetarian restaurant in Houston, Madras Pavilion. Their specialty is dhosas filled with various veggies, but we were there for the lunch buffet. Overall, it was pretty good, and included many things I'd never seen before, despite having been to India and eaten at a South Indian joint in Delhi.

Among the "new" foods were deep-fried lentil doughnuts and lentil-rice pancakes (see photo, above). They were very into lentils- at least half of the buffet items included them in one way or another. Lucky for me, I like lentils. The lentil doughnuts were tasty, with little black flecks I assume were lentil chunks. It tasted like a very dense potato cake, with a bit of Indian flair. The lentil pancakes reminded me a little of my beloved Ethiopian injera- no relation, obviously, but they were great for soaking up the curry-like sauce from my paneer and peas. I was shocked they contained lentils, as they looked more like a bleached-white Little Debbie snack cake than anything else, but they had a nice texture and a sour flavor kind of like injera. Everything else on the buffet line was pretty typical- a curry dish, a lentil dish (actually, several), a few more veggies-in-curry dishes, some rice pudding. Not bad, as Indian buffets go. They apparently try to represent Indian food as a whole, with dishes from many different regions in the buffet line. They will also make fresh dhosas for you to wrap your veggie goodies in, but we were too full.

As we ate, we noticed a little boy wearing what looked like a smallish knit hat. We speculated about the sense in wearing a wool hat on a warm summer day. A few minutes later, as several orthodox Jews walked in, we realized the 'hat' was actually a large yarmulke. Walking out, we noticed a large plaque advertising the restaurant's status as a kosher dairy restaurant, and the seal of approval given by the Houston Kashruth Association. I don't know if it would drive mohels wild, but it was definitely tasty.