Savor Scout › Food guides › Dosa
How to find good dosa
Dosa is a large, thin, crisp crepe of fermented rice and lentil batter, from South India. It comes with sambar and coconut chutney, is usually vegetarian, and is one of the cheapest, best meals in any city with a South Indian restaurant.
What separates a good one from a bad one
- Crisp, golden, thin — The edges should crackle; the centre is slightly soft. Thick, pale dosa is undercooked or badly fermented.
- Sour from fermentation — A good batter is fermented overnight and has a gentle tang.
- Sambar made fresh — Lentil and vegetable stew with tamarind. Should be tangy and well spiced.
- Several chutneys — Coconut, tomato, and often mint or peanut.
- Idli and vada too — A full South Indian tiffin menu means a specialist kitchen.
What to order
- Masala dosa — Filled with spiced potato.
- Mysore masala dosa — With red chutney spread inside.
- Rava dosa — Lacy semolina crepe.
- Idli and vada — Steamed rice cakes and lentil doughnuts.
- Filter coffee — South Indian-style.
Where to find Dosa
Dosa is mostly found at Indian restaurants, so that is where to look. Open listings put 8,675 of them across the US, and these are the cities and campuses with the most.
Cities with the most
New York, NY 312 Chicago, IL 126 San Francisco, CA 103 Sunnyvale, CA 77 Los Angeles, CA 77 Seattle, WA 72 San Jose, CA 72 Jersey City, NJ 72
Campuses with the most within a mile
New School University 99 Baruch 96 The Graduate Center 94 FIT 80 Touro University 79 NYU 77
A few to start with
- Indian Express — New York, NY
18 Murray St, New York - Tikka N Curry — Chicago, IL
400 S Financial Pl, Chicago - Spice of America — San Francisco, CA
1655 Market St, San Francisco - Pani Puri Company — Sunnyvale, CA
620 Hollenbeck Ave, Sunnyvale - BADMAASH Downtown LA — Los Angeles, CA
108 W 2nd St, Los Angeles - Cafe Zum Zum — Seattle, WA
823 3rd Ave, Seattle
Counts are listings in Overture Maps open data (September 2026), counted by the town in each address. Independent places only in the examples above, and they are a starting point rather than a ranking.
How Savor Scout looks for it
The search reads for dosa, South Indian, sambar and udupi, and favours vegetarian South Indian specialists over North Indian menus that add a dosa or two.
Looking in a particular city?
Each of these opens Savor Scout with the location already set, so you can say what you want and it searches from there. It covers 1,000 US cities in total — these are simply the largest.
- New York, NY
- Los Angeles, CA
- Chicago, IL
- Houston, TX
- Philadelphia, PA
- Phoenix, AZ
- San Antonio, TX
- San Diego, CA
- Dallas, TX
- San Jose, CA
- Austin, TX
- Indianapolis, IN
- Jacksonville, FL
- San Francisco, CA
- Columbus, OH
- Charlotte, NC
- Fort Worth, TX
- Detroit, MI
- El Paso, TX
- Memphis, TN
- Seattle, WA
- Denver, CO
- Washington, DC
- Boston, MA
- Nashville, TN
- Baltimore, MD
- Oklahoma City, OK
- Louisville, KY
- Portland, OR
- Las Vegas, NV
- Milwaukee, WI
- Albuquerque, NM
- Tucson, AZ
- Fresno, CA
- Sacramento, CA
- Long Beach, CA
- Kansas City, MO
- Mesa, AZ
- Virginia Beach, VA
- Atlanta, GA
- Colorado Springs, CO
- Omaha, NE
- Raleigh, NC
- Miami, FL
- Oakland, CA
- Minneapolis, MN
- Tulsa, OK
- Cleveland, OH
- Wichita, KS
- Arlington, TX
- New Orleans, LA
- Bakersfield, CA
- Tampa, FL
- Honolulu, HI
- Aurora, CO
- Anaheim, CA
- Santa Ana, CA
- St. Louis, MO
- Riverside, CA
- Corpus Christi, TX
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When you might want this
- Where to eat when half the group is vegetarian
- Where to eat when you're broke
- Where to have a breakfast meeting