Saravanaa Bhavan

This is one of the most popular chains from South India and the biggest reason why I keep coming back to this restaurant is because of its nostalgic value. I was born and brought up and Chennai and visiting Saravanaa Bhavan has always been a family affair and being in London and yearning for those days always brings me here.
You can’t go wrong with most dishes on the menu here, but my personal favourites are Button Idly, Onion Rava Masala Dosa, and of course the signature South Indian Filter Coffee.
Oh and this restaurant is so affordable, you’ll be leaving full for less than 5 – 6 pounds.

Great food, great prices, really nice staff. The menu is entirely vegetarian with Udupi style cooking, my favorite Indian cuisine, so I searched this place out. Best garlic naan I’ve ever had. Utthappam also great. Aloo gobi fantastic. All for something like £8! Short walk from Tooting Broadway and totally worth it.

Saravana Bhavan is without doubt the best south indian restaurant I’ve ever been to.
The food is amazing, flavourful and spicy. The staff are friendly and make good recommendations.
As a vegetarian I love the restaurant, such a wide variety of meals and everything an option! The dosa and parotta are particularly good!
I would strongly recommend this restaurant — it is authentic and great value for money!

The menu of Saravanaa Bhavan claims it to be the ‘World’s No.1 Indian Restaurant’ which is a bit of a bold claim but I can see why it has a case. From just a single visit I could tell that Saravanaa Bhavan has traditional roots, yielding flavoursome and substantial Indian food for very good value. I enjoyed a hearty meal for 2 (consisting of garlic naan, mini ghee idly and vegetable do-​piyaz) for a mere total of £10.15. The setting is not fancy or extraordinary in any way but the food speaks for itself.

I have already reviewed the Wembley branch of this chain — so check out the glowing review there.
All I will say here is that the Tooting branch is just as good as the larger establishment at Wembley.
The Tooting establishment is much smaller and much less crowded. However the menu size is the same.
Down South we finally got around to sampling the pastry case, sampling their Southern Indian rice specialties and having their dal.
Thumbs up all the way — with especial thumbs up for desserts and for the dal.
And the price for two people ordering everything they could stuff their face with to the point of satiety
— was less than it would cost for one person to have one entrée at a gastropub.
So Saravanaa Bhavan gets the thumbs up both from the food critic —
and from your accountant!

Five of us had so much food in one night! A friend from India took us here (apparently it’s a chain from India).
The restaurant was almost empty when we arrived around 7:30pm on Wednesday. 30min later, however, this place was packed with people. So try to get here early to get a table.
Being a Dosa fan, I was pretty happy to have a really impressive Paper Masala Dosa. The potatoes were a little spicier than what I was used to, but still very good.
My friend took charge of ordering a lot of other dishes like deep fried cauliflower (looks bright red but not spicy), onion Rava Dosa, Paratha, Sambar, Uthappam etc. Coconut chutney and the other green-​colored chutney were very nice as well. The service was pretty fast and the food kept coming one after another.
There were some interesting drinks. I ordered a glass of Passion Fruit Juice which had a very balanced blend of sweet and sour flavor with tiny seeds or spices. Other people ordered some Rose Milk (sweet milk with a hint of rose scent and flavor), Badham Kheer (almond milk with yellow spices) and Mango Lassi. I had a sip of each, all sweet and tasty :)
We must have ordered 8 or 9 dishes and 5 drinks but the total came out to be only £50, the cheapest dinner we had in London!

I’ve recently been to Tooting a number of times and forget what it’s like to live in an ethnic neighborhood. All the grocery shops reminds me of Queens! I’ve walked by this restaurant a few times and didn’t really have much of a draw so walked right by. My Malaysian friend pointed out that she really likes this chain veggie restaurant and its located all over the world.
I went for lunch and it wasn’t too busy during the week. I liked that there was automatically a jug of water at the table. There’s so much to chose from and I was particularly interested in the chinese fusion stuff. Paneer fried rice! What to get… I look around and looks like the dosa is the popular thing on the menu.
I haven’t had a proper dosa in years. I’ve had the ones you get at street fairs and they always seem to disappoint. There are so many to chose from but I went with the masala dosa. It comes out pretty quickly and it’s really as good as it gets. It’s so good and shockingly cheap. It was only £3.25! I do want to come back and try some of the other dishes.

Indian food chain — CHECK
Dirty tables — CHECK
Hand wash area — CHECK
Mithai glass case — CHECK
Amazing food — CHECK CHECK CHECK CHECK CHECK!!!
Amazing dosa, thali, and indo-​chinese food here and it’s soooo cheap. GO GO GO GO! What are you waiting for?