Dee Dee's - Santa Clara

A mixture of rice and different dishes with puri on the side

Last weekend we were contemplating on what food to eat. And while checking out Indian buffet we came across Dee Dee's. I was surprised to see how close the restaurant to our house. And then a light bulb suddenly turned on. We passed by this restaurant before and there were lots of people waiting outside. Intrigued by the good reviews we decided that we need to check it out.

By the time we got there it was passed 1 pm. I thought the line shouldn't be too long. Wrong. There were at least 20 people waiting outside. The restaurant was kind of tiny. Probably fit like 30 people.

We waited like about 40 minutes before we got our table. The buffet selection were not bad. I couldn't name any of those dishes though because I was unfamiliar with them. I recognized those puffy crunchy hollow cracker thingy which later on I found out were called mini poori or puri.


On my first round, I took a bit of everything except some dish that looked a bit too watery without anything in it. There was this thick gloopy yellowish thing that looked like thick yogurt which I skipped. While chowing down the food, I looked around other tables to see how other people were eating and also curiously wanting to know how people eat that yellow yogurt thingy.

mini puri shells (photo courtesy : www.rakskitchen.net)

From my surveillance I found out that some people dip the poori in that green watery thing or another brown color sauce. Those two are actually some sort of chutney. And one guy even dip the poori into the yellow gloopy yogurt like thing. So I decided to try a bit of that which turned out to be sweet. Not exactly my cup of tea so I didn't finish it.

All in all me and hubby didn't quite understand why people waited long time to eat there. If we look at the website, they do run specials every weekend. The weekend we were there, it was Gujarati food. We are no expert on Indian food so we probably didn't appreciate it as much as those other patrons. But it seems that Dee Dee's specializes in Gujarati, Kathiawadi, Maharashtrian and Rajastani food.

Dee Dee's
341 Lafayette St #101, Santa Clara, CA 95050
(408) 261-0568
http://deedeerestaurant.com/