This article will roughly take you five minutes to read. It is, incidentally, the exact amount of time that a glossy ‘dose’ stuffed with red chili paste and potato masal, then topped with a dollop of benne, takes to arrive on a plate.
If you have been a Chennai resident for long enough, you might have noticed a sudden but welcome rise in the number of Bengaluru-style darshinis (hotels by the roadside that use the quick-service model) to serve food that originates from Karnataka. On the menu, one can find the likes of the Bengaluru masala dose, Mysore masala dose, thatte idli, pongal, sabakki (sago)- based snacks and khara bath.
Priced at affordable rates, these restaurants now boast swanky interiors, and dedicated social media teams hyping up what one might have once dismissed as ‘ordinary’. Here, the art of dosa making has been chalked down to the second. Owners optimise time, manpower use, and sourcing — even deciding the number of times a ladle needs to be spun — to ensure that each fresh dosa arrives on a customer’s plate within minutes. Most importantly, everyone’s focus is on the sambar war, ensuring that the divide between Karnataka’s sweet sambar and Tamil Nadu’s more savoury version does not cause a loss in business.
Anish Akkalaneni, co-founder, Upavihar, a chain of six restaurants that started back in 2023, says that he remembers visiting udupis, which serve Karnataka-style food, before the advent of the Saravana Bhavans and Adyar Anandha Bhavans in Chennai. A regular at Sukh Sagar, and Doveton Cafe, he says, “I think the sambar played a major role in the shift from udupis to Tamil-style restaurants. We preferred a spicier version. That, and more options on the menu,” he says. With the drop in popularity of the udupis, the opportunity to sample Karnataka cuisine became few and far between. People had to travel to Bengaluru to eat a ‘dip’ — a bowl of idli or vade drowning in Karnataka-style sweet sambar and their coconut mint chutney.
Aashruth Rangarajan, founder, Eating Circles, which was one of the first restaurants in the city to enter the darshini lifestyle in 2016, followed this exact route. When he began working, he would travel to Bengaluru just for their breakfast. Every morning, he would be up, sampling the fare at crowded restaurants like MTR, CTR, and Vidyarthi Bhavan and wonder why food like this was unavailable in Chennai. He finally launched Eating Circles as a small kiosk-esque space in Kilpauk before moving to their larger location in Alwarpet. Suddenly, there was an audience travelling from across the city to grab a plate of their Mangalore buns and rose milk. The menu was limited but had a surprisingly large number of takers. “In the initial days, not many people were used to the ticketed style of waiting for food. We had to break up lines and work fast. It was chaos. Then, we optimised,” he says.
A pile of doses.
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement
It was only after COVID that a number of restaurants serving this style of food began rising though. “People were suddenly open to trying many new kinds of food here. Korean, Japanese, smash burgers. It is perhaps what led to the success of our restaurant too,” says Upavihar’s Anish. The restaurateurs also credit ghee-laden dishes at Rameshwaram Cafe going viral on Social Media to the rise in interest in Bengaluru-style food, but say that they would rather have their customers finish their whole plate, rather than waste because of the richness. Most say that they opted to follow the ‘OGs’ and the Taaza Thindi model — a modern quick service restaurant in Bengaluru, that is also Instagrammable.
From the motherland
A cup of coffee
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Special Arrangement
The attempt has always been mooted in the direction of authenticity. All the restaurateurs we meet for this story say that they brought masters from Bengaluru and Udupi to train their staff for over six months.
Anitha Sivakumar, founder, Sashwatha Cafe, who grew up in Dharmapuri near Bengaluru, says that she would visit Bengaluru during every holiday season because it was only about two-three hours away. “That is where my fascination for Karnataka-style dose began. Here, the dose, unlike the ones made at home, had treats inside, and were sometimes more elaborate. To replicate the feelings I had when I was much younger, we did research and development for an entire year, procuring much of our raw materials and coffee from Karnataka, particularly Udupi, and then training our staff by convincing masters who were extremely hesitant to come to Chennai,” she says. After their first location in Nandanam, they have opened their second branch in Anna Nagar, where they are moving away from a token system and have focussed on table service instead.
Benne dosa from Eating Circles
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Special Arrangement
Some of the challenges were unexpected. Childhood friends and business partners Rahul RH and Ajayraj KT behind SIHI (South Indian Heritage Inn) say that they searched high and low for dill leaves or sabakki soppu, instrumental for bringing the real taste of Bengaluru to our plates. “When I found that one dealer, you should have seen the joy on my face,” Rahul says. The two who grew up on a staple diet of thindi from ‘old Bangalore’ say that much of the food served under the guise of Karnataka cuisine is not real. “The Mysore masala for instance, does not have a green chutney as opposed to the red chutney in the Bangalore masala. It is served with sagu, a vegetable curry instead. We are intent on people having the bread pulav here. It is an attempt at the donne biryani and it has flown off the shelf since we began serving it,” Rahul adds.
Anish from Upavihar says that they are they only ones in the city serving chirote, a sweet, golden brown poori of sorts, in the city. “At our fine-dining restaurants in ECR and Egmore, we also serve dishes that are Bengaluru imports like the butta cigar or the burashi kebab. The aim is to understand the cuisine at its depth and do the best possible version of it,” he says.
On the other hand, Raja Elumalai and Muthu Kumaran, who began Coffee and Tiffin Shastra, have customised the Bengaluru-style meal to offer food that is sensitive to the Chennai palette. “We are a Chennai-person’s standard of Bengaluru food,” Raja says, adding that for instance, their Bissebele bath comes with a hint of spice rather than sweetness from the sambar.
Going beyond
Restaurant operations like these have all been optimised so they can easily scale up. Anish from Upavihar says that their weekday Kitchen Order Ticket (where multiple people place one order) stands anywhere between 300-400 a day, while it rises to around 900 on the weekends for each branch; while it is around 500 KOTs on weekdays and around 1,000 for Tiffin Shastra. SIHI, which only began a month ago, is already pulling regulars who come in once a day all days of the week. Upavihar, which has six locations in the city, is looking to expand by at least three more by the end of the year. Sashwatha Cafe is opting for the franchise model, and moving to Sri Lanka and Hyderabad soon.
Parthibhan Kesavaraj, managing director, Nithya Amirtham Indian Food says that they opened Thuritham, their darshini-style vertical in 2025 with one restaurant in Adyar. They have five on-going projects, and five others in the pipeline by the end of the year. Evidently, expansion is the name of the game.
Outside Tiffin Shastra
| Photo Credit:
Aboobacker Siddiq
Anitha from Sashwatha, Anish from Upavihar, Aashruth from Eating Circles, and Ajay from Sihi, all say that manpower and margins are their main challenges. “At a cafe, one can sell a coffee for ₹500 but at my restaurant, a coffee cannot be above ₹40 and a dosa cannot be over ₹100. Earlier, people would say that restaurants make 50% margins. But that is untrue. Margins are mostly at 10% for us but we make up because of our sheer volume,” Anish says.
Aashruth and Anish have been incentivising employees to stay with the brand by recognising their efforts every year through bonuses, gold coins, salaries through COVID, and promotions to build brand loyalty. In addition, to keep processes simple, there are set instructions on the exact amount of ingredients to make batters, coffee, and even the number of turns that a dosa ladle must make for the perfect crisp exterior and soft interior. Rahul from Sihi says that they will soon have monitors in the kitchen that live track orders.
Diners at SIHI
The ability to scale depends on the existing size of the brand but the intent is in the direction to take it to many more cities and towns across Tamil Nadu. Raja’s Tiffin Shastra already has a presence in Kanchipuram. Coimbatore is next on the cards for several brands, they say.
“What is the draw of this kind of darshini-style food?” Anish asks. I tell him that most items are familiar, clean, and easy to understand. There is something new for everyone to try and a lot to learn from a single breakfast outing.
“All that can be true. But taste. That is everything,” he responds. “Darshinis are tasty and people know what it is like to eat healthy, good tasting food, year-round. That is why food trends can rise and fade. Not a dosa. Never a dosa.”
