Small and chaotic it may be, but this Tamil vegetarian café serves some of the best South Indian food in north-west London. Ignore the rest of the large menu and go straight to the ‘signature dishes’ section where there are regional dosas, idlis, and an uthappam not easily found elsewhere. These are specialities from the regions of Andhra Pradesh (including the city of Guntur), Karnataka (including Bangalore), Malabar Coast, Hyderabad, and Tamil Nadu (Chennai, Karaikudi and Madurai). Paper-thin, khaki-coloured maharaja pesarattu is a great choice: made from whole green moong beans and stuffed with a scoop of snow-white upma (savoury semolina flecked with mustard seeds and curry leaves) and topped with chopped red onions. Madurai sandwich uthappam is also worth a try: pancake cushions tangy with properly fermented batter, stuffed with turmeric-golden mixed vegetables, and potatoes. The accompanying sambar is also good: redolent of black peppercorns and a comforting amount of pumpkin pieces.     

This spacious, busy, no-frills Wembley branch is part of an absolutely massive international vegetarian chain with several restaurants in London. The menu is as large as its global ambitions, with a mind-boggling choice of idli, dosa, and vada — not to mention curries, noodles, rice dishes, breads, and a Jain menu. Kara dosa, made from toor dal, raw rice, coconut and spices such as dried red chillies, are stuffed with a gentle potato-onion masala. There’s a good selection of idlis here — regular and mini-sized, steamed and fried, smeared in ghee, or dipped in sambar. To drink, there’s an imaginative selection of freshly pressed juices: grape, pineapple, and ginger being a particularly refreshing combination.  

Idli and dosa are the two main ‘tiffin’ snacks in South India, sold in small casual joints where people drop by on their way to work, often eating quickly while standing up. While dosas have been heartily embraced in the west, idlis have been somewhat slow to catch on outside Indian communities. Part of a 25-year old chain, this small Tamil tiffin joint is unusual, then, as it specialises in idli rather than dosa. The simple, neat café is a newcomer to East Ham, having opened only a few months ago. There’s a relatively short menu of plain idlis that are soft and squishy, and ones wearing a feisty red cloak of podi — ‘powder chutney’ made from dried red chillies, lentils, peanuts, sesame seeds, and spices mixed with ghee. Other items of note are kara paniyaram — mini pancakes that are South India’s answer to Dutch poffertjes — and sweet pongal made from split yellow moong beans, rice, jaggery and cashew nuts, here deeply musky with camphor, cooked Iyengar style in a version that’s served in temples. 

East Ham’s South Indian cafés are generally modest places with unremarkable interiors, but this vegetarian branch of an international chain is relatively smart and well-organised, with clued-up service by staff constantly kept on their toes by throngs of families who crowd the place. Dosas are a strong point, with soft, spongy sunflower-yellow ‘set dosa’ — which here come in a set of two — getting their vivid hue from a combination of chana dal, toor dal, and turmeric powder. This modern classic from Karnataka is served with vada curry made from coarsely crushed lentil fritters enveloped in masses of sliced onions, fennel seeds, and curry leaves. There are ‘5 taste’ dosa for the indecisive — five small pancakes with toppings ranging from green chillies to grated carrots — and squashy mini-muffin like paniyaram available on weekend evenings, if they haven’t sold out already. 

Modest and cosy, this 55-year old Kilburn venue is one of the oldest surviving South Indian restaurants in London. It’s worth visiting for the sambar — particularly for lunch — layered with so many spices that the humble lentil broth is revitalised with an impressive depth of flavour. There’s a mild-mannered dish of pumpkin with black eyed beans cooked in a coconut and shallot paste; and green bananas blanketed under thick yoghurt sauce. Also on the menu are subtly tangy cuttlefish curry; and Cochin chicken enlivened with the citrusy blast of fresh lime leaves. The restaurant has seen better days, and its status as a celebrity haunt has long diminished, but that sambar will always be a draw.  

A no-frills East Ham café that’s cramped with tables too close together: This Kerala venue attracts mostly male customers who come for the many stridently spiced beef, chicken, and seafood dishes. There’s a vast menu that includes fried silver pomfret, crab curry, and a range of chicken curries flavoured with roasted fresh coconut. Spongy discs of thattu dosa come with potent sambar astringent with asafoetida; and marvellously peppery avial, though a little dry, is crammed with pieces of earthy yams, raw green bananas, and vegetable drumsticks.

It’s pronounced ‘thattu-kda’ with an emphasis on the central two t’s, a word that means street food vendor in the Malayalam language. The small, bright green venue is owned by husband and wife Biju and Preeti Gopinath who’re originally from Kerala. The standard of cooking here is inconsistent, and the food is at its best when Preeti is in the kitchen. Betraying its origins as a pub, the venue continues to attract mostly male diners that once flocked to the place for drinks; but it’s also hugely popular with students, families, dating couples, and Londoners in the know for whom it’s the best-known South Indian in the area.

Everyone comes here for the fry dishes: Chicken fry, in which the bird on the bone is batter-fried until crisp and golden and showered with plentiful wisps of fried sliced shallots and curry leaves. Another notable dish is whole, gently spiced tomato paste-marinated tilapia steamed in banana leaves. There’s little here for vegetarians, and in fact the restaurant has been steadily removing meat-free dishes from its menu due to lack of demand — apparently vegetarians go to the area’s many other meat-free restaurants. (This seems unusual, but observant Hindus like their food to be ‘pure vegetarian’, cooked in separate kitchens or even in separate establishments altogether — which has prompted many South Indian chains to launch separate veg and non-veg branches).

Located parallel to the main drag of the High Street in East Ham, this Kerala restaurant is the best in the area. It’s a neat, cosy place festooned with ornaments and paintings, including a striking nettipattam: a decorative shield used as an adornment for the trunks of elephants. 

Chicken 65 (with or without bone) and gobi 65, delicately spiced with cardamom and black pepper, are some of the tastiest versions found in London. Seafood is very much a strong point here, with lively spicing found in crab fry and squid curry. Fresh spices flown in from Kerala perk up a complex black chickpea curry, eaten with mashed cassava root that should be rolled into balls with fingers. Egg roast features whole, shallow-fried boiled eggs in a pool of thick gravy studded with dried red chillies, with crunchy cabbage thoran making an excellent foil. Don’t miss the lacy doilies of appams, spongy in the middle and crisp around the edges, that are better here than at other restaurants in the area.

Chef Sriram Aylur’s 20-year-old Westminster stalwart was the first South Indian to gain a Michelin star. It specialises in Southwest coastal cuisine that includes the states of Karnataka and Kerala, and is owned by the neighbouring St James’ Court, part of the Taj group of hotels. It’s a beautifully designed space, with a bar area leading to a dining room decorated with ornate ‘jaali’ screens and splashes of bold, bright watercolours; and a division bell for MPs from nearby Houses Of Parliament. Seafood is a speciality here, and two of the signature dishes include a gentle moilee of halibut and prawns, and subtly spiced baked black cod. Pulao of green jackfruit pieces that taste like artichokes, made substantial with lentil nuggets, is rich with ghee and sunny with saffron. Staff are lovely; and there are freebies thrown in such as papads with pickles, a palate cleanser shot of rasam, and cardamom-flavoured chocolate — so the strict no-tipping policy can feel awkward for diners who want to reward such great-value food and service.

Most Londoners mispronounce the name of this popular London-origin mini-chain as ‘say-gaar’ — in fact, it’s ‘saa-gar’, which means ocean. It’s one of the few South Indian restaurants to showcase the simple vegetarian food of Udupi in Karnatka, centred on fresh vegetables, beans, and grains. The elegantly austere Hammersmith branch is the original and by far the best. Opt for the generous Udupi thali, which comes with various dals and lentil broths, and a regularly-changing selection of vegetables that may include crushed potatoes with a tempering of urad lentils and curry leaves, a side vegetable that might include shredded white cabbage with carrots, or ivy gourd or swede, and chayote cooked in a mellow yoghurt and coconut gravy fired up with green chillies. The flavours are gentle and nuanced, in keeping with the confidently understated look and mood of the place.

This Kerala stalwart in Tooting has been around for over 30 years; and the owners also run two central London restaurants, Malabar Junction and Ragam. It’s cosy as a sitting room in a Kerala home, with comfy leather chairs, dusky pink and bare brick walls festooned with ornaments like nettipattam, and almost life-sized figures of deities. Cashew nut pakoras are a retro dish not seen in London’s South Indian restaurants much these days, so order them whenever they’re found to nibble with drinks; here, they’re both tender and crunchy at the same time. Kerala’s own KFC — Kerala fried chicken, with or without bone — comes with warm notes of fresh ginger, garlic, and curry leaves. Seafood is notable, with Malabar fish curry and king prawn Malabar both flavoured with the intriguing back note of kudampuli, a tangy, smoky fruit that’s known as ‘fish tamarind’ due to its liberal use in seafood dishes of the region. Even those who don’t like okra are guaranteed to love the version here, the bright green pods steeped in a gravy given wonderful depth of flavour from tamarind, coconut, and liberal use of spices.