Philadelphia Chutney Company offers healthy menu but is short on spice

Everyone I know who visits southern India comes back with a taste for the region's street food called dosa. It's a paper-thin crepe filled with a spicy potato filling.

Barring a trip into Manhattan, Philadelphia dosa lovers were left to their dosa memories.

No longer so. Nirav Mehta and partner Baldev Singh (who owns two northern Indian restaurants outside the city) took the concept and created Philadelphia Chutney Company. The first location just opened off Rittenhouse Square, and more of these healthy, inexpensive fast-food operations are planned for some university locations.

The process for dosa takes time. First, you soak rice and lentils overnight. The next step is to carefully grind the mixture with just enough water to make a batter that sits for 24 hours to slightly ferment. This is what gives the dosa and its pancake version, uttapa, its lovely "sourdough" characteristic.

Cooking the batter requires skill, which is one reason that Mehta and Singh brought in trained chefs from southern India. Dosa can be made on a tava, a slightly concave oval generally made of cast iron or stone, but for higher volume a flattop griddle is used.

A ladle of the batter is poured onto the hot surface and smoothed in an ever-expanding circle to create a perfectly round, paper-thin crisp about the size of the cafeteria tray it is served on. Your choice of filling is spooned on top, and the dosa is folded over it.

Uttapa is the same batter but cooked as a pancake. The texture reminds me of injera, the Ethiopian bread. Since there is fusion going on here, I could see this going from savory to a dessert with some fruit and yogurt.

The Sambar (93 cents . . . for goodness' sake, make it a dollar. There isn't even a cent key on the keyboard anymore!) was my favorite dish, and it was a great side to the dosa. This soup had everything that is wonderful about southern Indian cuisine - the flavors were expertly layered, a hallmark of this cuisine.

The obvious use of curry leaf and murungakkai, or "drumstick tree," solidified the authenticity. The curry adds a base flavor similar to garlic and onion, while the drumstick imparts a slightly bitter tang.

I found the Classic Masala Dosa ($6) to be surprisingly bland. Southern Indian cuisine is typically quite spicy, and this potato mixture lacked any heat.