A dosa from the Dosa Shack trailer. Photo: Asher Price/Axios
👋 Asher here.
As a college student, I spent a memorable summer working for the Bangalore bureau of the Times of India.
I was 20 years old, feeling keenly cultural dislocation and distance from home, even as I was generously welcomed by a host family and newsroom journalists.
Flashback: My hosts made excellent food — including dosas, which are large, thin, lentil-and-rice-based pancakes stuffed with potatoes, or spinach and cheese, or any manner of ingredients and served with chutneys.
I always think of them, flaky and tubular, as culinary bazookas.
Biting into a dosa this weekend at Dosa Shack, a food trailer on Burnet Road that opened in 2022, brought that summer vividly back.
What I ate: A spinach, paneer, corn and cheese dosa ($12.95) and a classic potato-and-onion dosa, both of them both crisp and soft, tangy and tasty.
The paneer tikka ($6.99) — skewers of paneer served with jalapenos and mint mayo — was fine, but the dosas are the star.
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The bottom line: I'm still thinking about that wonderful newsroom moment every afternoon when a crew of kids distributed small cups of sweet chai.