Small Potatoes Make The Steak Look Bigger

I like this place (70 Serangoon Road, tel: 6297 6297) down in Little India more than just a little bit despite the fact that I'm a meat loving person and there is only vegetarian food that is served here. I had some initial apprehension about the food here since the front of the restaurant looked like a fast food joint of sorts and indeed, the food was served pretty fast after we had ordered. All of the lingering doubts were dispelled after a very satisfying dinner from Chella's.

Being not too familiar with many of the items on menu, we picked what we thought looked interesting and asked the serving staff when we hit things that we didn't recognize at all. Here's a show of what we ended up with apart from the stomach comforting masala tea and milk.






What I found very appealing was the variety of appetite whetting sauces/pastes that were available for the dosa. In effect, it gave variety to the flavor of the rice flour pancakes. As I had preemptively guessed pineapple & cheese dosa was a rather savoury and delectable, married by the salty cheese and appetizing pineapple chunks in the centre. The ragi iddiyappam was a variant of the regular iddiyappam (string hoppers) using what was mentioned to be made with another type of flour. The taste was quite similar to the regular version and it came across surprisingly freshly made and was good with both the orange sugar and spicy coconut chutney. I think I may have found what I've been looking for from what I had some time back in the Song of India, in the form of the kara bath which was a savoury semolina cake with diced vegetables. I'm fairly sure that the sweet version called kesari bath is the very thing I've been looking for.

The gobi masala's delicious with the bits of battered and fried cauliflowers soaking in the spicy gravy. I was a little surprised to see an actual piece of butter melting in the paneer butter marsala.

This place had me scraping up the residual sauces with the spoon. All for $20.50 and very friendly service.

19/04/2008 update - A revisit!!


I had certainly not planned to return just the next day, but I'm definitely not complaining about it. The original intention was to drop by Chellas for some nice hot masala tea or milk, but we ended up ordering something to chew on while at it. This innocuous looking earthy orange mound as you can see above, is the kesari bath which I have mentioned earlier. A sweet steamed semolina cake with bits of of sultana inside. Now in case you are wondering, this wasn't excessively sweet as one is used to having in Indian desserts. In fact this item wasn't even on the desserts section of the menu. I think this stuff is pretty awesome.


While at it, we grabbed also, a chilli, cheese and mushroom dosa and helped ourselves with an order of rasamallai. This particular dosa came with a healthy kick from the spices and also, the salty cheese. The rasamallai we were told is a milk based dessert. I had something similar back in Mustard which was made of cottage cheese and had a texture like damp cardboard. Does anyone know the differences if any between these two?