The South Indian restaurants changing how we think about dosa and beyond

South Indian food is having a real moment, and it's not just about dosa and idli anymore. From Kerala toddy-shop small plates in Manhattan to a Michelin-starred Tamil menu in the West Village, chefs are digging into regional recipes from Chettinad, Kerala, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu, giving them the spotlight they deserve.

Here are 12 restaurants worth planning a meal around. 

Mumbai 

Uppu

This 36-seater in Bandra Reclamation is all about comfort. Opened by the Team behind Oleander Farms, Saltt Karjat, and Common House Microbrewery, Uppu serves up nostalgic South Indian fare—think Tamil Nadu curries, Kerala’s coconut-heavy gravies, and the odd Andhra-style kick of spice. It’s pure vegetarian; breakfast is a big deal here, and the filter coffee is non-negotiable.

Oor 

Set in Fort, Oor is run by chef and co-founder Panchali Bhatia, who’s built the menu around heirloom South Indian recipes passed down through her family. The space leans into Karnataka’s craft traditions, with Kasuti embroidery and Channapatna wooden toys dotted through the interiors. Order the benne dosa, the bondas, and the irulli uttapam, and don’t skip dessert—the pineapple sheera is a keeper.

Namah 

Namah opened in Four Bungalows, Mumbai, this May and immediately became one of the city’s most talked-about openings. Founded by Arvind and Pallavi Shetty, it’s inspired by Bengaluru’s darshini culture, and the space looks the part—a traditional Padipura-style gateway, courtyards, amphitheatre seating. Go for the ghee podi button idlis, the benne podi dosa, and the Mangalorean buns, and expect a queue.

Benne

If you’ve been on Instagram at all in the last two years, you’ve seen Benne’s buttery, crisp dosas. What started as a tiny stand-and-eat spot in Bandra—co-founded by Akhil Iyer and Shriya Narayan as a tribute to Bengaluru’s Darshinis—has since expanded to Juhu, a larger outpost in Chowpatty, and, as of December 2025, Delhi. The benne masala dosa is the draw (no sambar on purpose; it’s a house rule), along with ghee podi thatte idli and a properly good Mysore pak. 

Malgudi 

Composer Shankar Mahadevan’s restaurant venture is named after R.K. Narayan’s fictional town, and it plays with South Indian classics without straying too far from them. Expect a solid benne dosa alongside more unexpected additions like podi cheese balls and a filter kappi panna cotta. Malgudi has grown fast since its Mumbai launch, with outposts now open in Dubai and Abu Dhabi too.

Chennai 

Avartana 

Inside the ITC Grand Chola (and now the ITC Maratha in Mumbai too), Avartana turns South Indian cuisine into a full tasting-menu experience. There are multiple set menus to choose from—the seven-course Maya, nine-course Bela, eleven-course Jiaa, and thirteen-course Anika and Tara—each one a run of small, elaborately plated bites built around coconut, curry leaf, and tamarind. Every course comes with its own spiced cocktail pairing, so clear your evening. 

Kappa Chakka Kandhari 

Named after tapioca, jackfruit, and bird’s-eye chilli—the three essentials of a Kerala kitchen—this Haddows Road restaurant is the product of some serious research. Chef Regi Mathew and his team spent three years travelling across Kerala, eating in 265 homes and 70 toddy shops, and came back with over 800 documented recipes. Try the erachi choru, the vattappam, and the kandhari ice cream, which somehow manages to be sweet, creamy, and properly spicy all at once.

New York 

Semma 

Semma, in the West Village, was the first Indian restaurant in New York to win a Michelin star, and it’s held onto it every year since 2022. Chef Vijay Kumar builds the menu around his own childhood in rural Tamil Nadu—there’s a gunpowder dosa doused in ghee, a snail curry called nathai pirattal, and a sambar made with fifty different ingredients. In 2025, Kumar won the James Beard Award for Best Chef in New York State, and Semma topped The New York Times’ list of the city’s 100 best restaurants.

Chatti 

Chef Regi Mathew—also behind Kappa Chakka Kandhari in Chennai—brought his Kerala toddy-shop concept to Midtown earlier this year. The menu is built around “touchings,” toddy-shop-style small plates that come with an illustrated placemat to help you navigate the options, plus heartier mains like a dry-fried Malabar mutton and duck mappas. The cocktail list keeps the theme going with a clarified-sambar vodka drink called the Sam Bar.

Drāvida

The newest opening on this list, Drāvida, is chef Aarthi Sampath’s take on South Asian diaspora cooking—not just South Indian, but the flavours that travelled with migration to Trinidad, South Africa, and beyond. The menu includes Trinidadian doubles, South African oxtail bunny chow, and an idli-and-shrimp dish with roots in the South Indian diaspora in Indonesia. It’s set across two floors of a converted century-old East Village building, with a speakeasy called Jam and Jaggery tucked downstairs.

Goa 

Tamil Table 

Housed in a restored Portuguese bungalow in Assagao, Tamil Table brings proper Tamil cooking to North Goa. It’s the work of Sacha Mendes, of the Goan fashion label Sacha’s Shop, and her chef-husband, Karthikeyan S., whose menu draws on his mother and grandmother’s kitchens in Pondicherry. Come for the chicken 65 and the tamarind fish curry, and stay for the Sunday biryani, made with seeraga samba rice.

Hyderabad 

Simply South by Chef Chalapathi Rao 

A Hyderabad institution now well into its second decade, Simply South is run by Chef Chalapathi Rao, formerly the custodian of ITC’s pan-India Dakshin brand. The menu spans five South Indian states—Telangana, Andhra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala—without trying too hard to reinvent any of them. It’s the kind of place regulars return to precisely because nothing’s changed.

London 

Saravanaa Bhavan, Wembley

Saravanaa Bhavan is the largest South Indian vegetarian restaurant chain in the world, with more than a hundred outposts globally, and its Wembley branch on Ealing Road has long been the go-to for London’s South Asian community. Expect a dinner-plate-sized masala dosa, a proper vegetarian thali, and filter coffee poured the right way. It’s unpretentious, reliable, and exactly what you want after a long flight home.

Lead image: Pexels 

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