Ulavacharu

Hubby's first plate : mysore bonda, dosa on top, eggplant pickle, lemon rice, a few chutney

Unexpectedly came across this restaurant on Yelp when researching some other cuisine. Seeing how this restaurant was rated pretty high by other Yelpers intrigued me. I am always opened to try Indian style buffet. But through one of the reviews I learnt about thalis which was also served at this restaurant. Curious I decided we need to try it ourselves.

According to the photos posted on Yelp, thalis are served Monday-Thursday while Friday and weekends are buffet style. I was interested in checking out their thalis. It's harder to make time to go there on weekday with hubby. So one Monday when we had time we decided to go though the weather was stormy with pouring rain. Surprisingly the restaurant was busy but unfortunately they served buffet that day instead of thalis. Oh well, we'd have to come back another time.



The lunch buffet cost $13.99 and it offered quite a varieties of vegetarian and non vegetarian dishes. Also included was chai tea and corona beer. Though I didn't see anyone actually helped themselves with the beer. Not quite a weather for beer I guess. There were 5 different types of rice - plain, vegetarian biryani, chicken biryani, lemon rice and curd rice. The only thing I didn't try was the curd rice.

My plate with lemon rice, papdi chaat, chow mein and some other dishes

I have tried quite a few Indian buffet but I still found new things here that I enjoyed.  There was a dish name papdi chaat that tasted tangy, crispy and very refreshing. I googled it and it had tamarind chutney among other ingredients. The crispy part of it came from papri which was like crackers made of fried dough. I guess probably not the most healthy thing ?

Another interesting dish I tried this time was called mysore bonda which looked like a deep fried donut hole. But the taste was mild with some hint of spice which I couldn't quite place but at the same time sort of familiar.

As we were at the table, the naan was brought to us. Then another guy came around offering dosa which was another type of bread which later on I found out was made of rice and black lentil. But honestly between the how many types of rice and the naan we were pretty stuffed. So we pretty much turned down the offer of dosa after the first round.

Some of the dishes that we remembered were some sort of chow mein (?), cauliflower dish, butter chicken, goat curry, sambar (didn't try), etc.

We may have to go back another day to try the thalis.

Ulavacharu
685 E El Camino Real, Sunnyvale, CA 94087
(408) 310-3111