Long Island Restaurants

Vasanta Bhavan

At Vasanta Bhavan, two waiters passed our table bearing a dish so unwieldy, a third waiter followed as an escort. He turned to us. "That," he said, "was a 4-foot dosa you just saw go by."

A dosa is a South Indian crepe made from a fermented lentil and rice flour batter. It's lacy, slightly crunchy, and usually filled with spiced mashed potatoes. The typical dosa, meant for one or two, is about 18 inches long. This one, I found out, serves four.

The dosa, whatever its size, is just one of many attractions at this winsome Indian-vegetarian restaurant furnished with colorful upholstered booths, its walls a buttery yellow. I thought it might be a good spot to take our vegetarian son and his girlfriend visiting from Chicago. It ended up an ideal spot.

We began with an assorted appetizer platter, each item fried to a greaseless crisp, spiced with verve and complexity. There were onion and spinach pakoras (fritters), samosas (turnovers filled with potatoes and peas), vegetable cutlets (breaded patties fashioned of chopped vegetables) and aloo bonda (dumplings filled with a mix of potatoes and onions). We also enjoyed some idli, pillowy but bland steamed rice cakes that took on flavor when dipped in sambar, a lively pea soup that also functions as a sauce. We ordered vadi (fried lentil doughnuts), which we dipped in rasam (a tomato-lentil soup-sauce), savoring every crunchy bite.

Then came a mysore masala dosa, the crepe filled with a chile-fired spiced potato mixture and served with three chutneys -- coconut, mint and tomato. Even better, I thought, was a spicy onion-chili uthappam, a flat frittata-like pancake made from the same batter as the dosa but with all its ingredients cooked into it.

We moved on to curries. Allo mutter (cubed potatoes and green peas) had plenty of piquancy. I especially liked the malai kofta, nubby little vegetable dumplings in a creamy tomato sauce. The biggest hit, though, was the lush palak paneer, spinach and cottage cheese simmered together with a beguiling assortment of herbs. "This," said my son, "is true comfort food." I concurred, agreeing that the dish was creamier than most and a lot less spinach-y. To accompany, we had poori, a puffy deep-fried bread that deflated when torn apart, as well as chapati, blistered baked whole-wheat discs.

Days later, I returned with a friend for the lunch buffet, where I got to sample some items not on the regular menu. One was a Malabar curry, a spirited blend of mixed vegetables and coconut milk. Another, an addictive vermicelli dish called semiya upma, is one of those things worth knowing about to request at dinner. Vermicelli showed up again in a compelling dessert called semiya payasam, a warm sweet, slightly soupy noodle pudding. It was far superior to the ho-hum gulab jaman (fried cheese balls) and the syrupy-sweet badam halwa (almond pudding) I had at the previous meal.

With so few choices for vegetarians on Long Island, this spot is particularly welcome. It's also seductive enough to tempt carnivores away from their steak houses for a bit of culinary adventure.

Reviewed by Joan Reminick, 12/07/07.

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