Atithi Indian Cuisine

Atithi Indian Cuisine @ 2445 Burrard St.

I ate at this place yesterday for lunch. It was one of the worst Indian meals I've ever had. I just had to write about it to warn people away.

My point can be summed up in one word: Tortilla.

Either they think their customers are too stupid to notice the difference between a chapati and a tortilla, or they ran out of chapatis and decided to make due with some Old El Paso tortillas.

Even the cheapest and crappiest of Indian restaurants serve fresh naan, but not this place. They give you tortillas.

The buffet, as it were, consisted of all the usual suspects, with some weird items.

The lentils were watery and without taste, the Tandoori chicken the most tasteless I've ever had, and the strange fish was pretty much rendered inedible by the peculiar sauce they used, which tasted like corn starch + tomato paste.

They didn't even have any raita that I could see. For dessert they offered some sweet rice that was bland and a pudding that turned out to be mango pudding, but was synthetic tasting and not like any Indian dessert I've ever had. It's really amazing: I couldn't finish almost any of the items I chose, from mains to dessert. Oh, and the pappadums? All broken into little bits. Not a single whole pappadum available.

You've been warned.

Good Indian food is something I've had a hard time finding in Vancouver. Well, let me rephrase that. Good, inexpensive Indian food. When I lived in Houston, I knew of any number of Indian restaurants serving a lunch buffet with a dozen items, each of them delicious and authentic, for between $5 and $7. And the buffet changed on a daily basis. I could say the same for Mexican food. In Texas, Mexican food was by definition cheap. Up here, even the most shoddy, inauthentic enchilada dish runs you $12. Pepita's at Burrard and 4th is a typical example of a place that serves crappy, overpriced Mexican food. There's no justification for this - it's beans and tortillas, not caviar and foie gras. Maybe in the past with the exchange rate there was some justification, but with the exchange rate where it is now, I find it laughable to charge these prices. (I'm paid in US dollars, and the Canadian amount was less than the US amount for the first time ever when I exchanged my last paycheck, so maybe that's why I'm a little grumpy.)

Anyway, the reason I tried this place out is because the buffet was cheap (for Vancouver), $7.99, and I don't know of any good, inexpensive Indian restaurants nearby so that I don't have to do a 40 minute drive south to Sunset every time I want to eat cheap Indian food. There's an Indian buffet around Denman and Davie called Swagat Tandoori that is probably, shockingly, even worse than Atithi. I'm amazed that after all these years it is still around. There are naturally some good Indian restaurants on Davie and on Robson, but they are absurdly overpriced. So I had high hopes this place would be good, which made my disappointment all the more bitter.

I was hopeful when Desi Lounge opened up at Denman and Barclay just near my place a few years ago, but dismayed to find the menu typically overpriced. The buffet was also overpriced and not that impressive. I tried it twice and never went back. I was really disappointed. I would have frequented the place if it was cheap and good and simple. Instead they went for this ridiculous ostentatious concept with a huge hall and fancy styling and HD TVs, etc., not at all what I want from an Indian restaurant. I want good Indian food, not chintzy glitz. It was a real shame and wasted opportunity. They closed down not long after opening because I think nobody went. It was a bad location (second floor), and they were undoubtedly paying too much for the rent.

Saravanaa Bhavan's lunch box

Last time I went there I noticed this lunch box they advertised in their window, and I was curious to try it out. So I went back the other day for lunch and gave it a shot.

Inside there's a sign explaining what it is in more detail:

That cleared up a bit of the mystery. I was hoping it would be just the take-out version of the buffet, but it's not. I was a bit disappointed that they only gave you a choice of one main, and a pretty small choice at that. Why not just let you pick two or three small portions of stuff from the buffet? Anyway I ordered it and it came out from the back about five minutes later in a plastic bag and ready to go.

This is what it looked like inside:

A modest portion that would be good for a quick take-out if you have to rush back to work or something.

It looks small but it's pretty filling. Mostly because there is SO MUCH rice. way more than necessary, especially considering the large piece of nan bread they include. There is way more than necessary for the small portion of main. I got the paneer butter masala. It was good, like everything else at the buffet.

For $5.60 (tax included) it's a decent enough deal. I won't be getting it often, though, because the whole point of going there is to be able to enjoy a number of different items at the same time, and this lunch box kind of defeats the purpose. Still, a nice idea. It just needs a little work.

TOP PICK: Saravanaa Bhavan

Saravanaa Bhavan @ 955 W. Broadway
http://www.saravanaabhavan.ca/

Starting with this post, I'm going to try to occasionally highlight my favorite restaurants in Vancouver. I'll call this series the 'top picks' series. These are the restaurants I go to on a regular basis because they're good, they're appropriately priced, and they are consistent at what they do.

I'm starting out with the well-known Vegetarian Indian buffet Saravanaa Bhavan on Broadway between Oak and Laurel. I tend to be skeptical of popular restaurants, because in my experience, more often than not, fame eventually gets to a restaurant's head, and they go downhill. Or popularity becomes an echo chamber in which crowds attract crowds, giving the impression of the restaurant being far better than it truly is.

Saravanaa Bhavan justly deserves all the praise that's been sung about it. I've been there probably almost 10 times over the years, and in a first in my entire life, rather than the food going downhill, it feels like the food only gets better every time.

Their buffet is always fresh and constantly renewed. The crowds help to ensure freshness. Every time I go there are some items I've never seen before. They have a huge variety of items on the buffet.

The interior is spacious without being well decorated. It's really a functional interior, with enough space to pack in large families of Indians. It was packed when we arrived on Sunday for lunch, and it stayed that way for most of our time there. Again, the place is frequented by Indians, testament to its authenticity. Having grown up a vegetarian in Houston, where there is a large population of Indians and many great vegetarian Indian restaurants, I ate vegetarian Indian food practically every week for a large part of my lifetime, so I know what good veggie Indian food is supposed to taste like. And apart from Saravanaa Bhavan, I haven't really tasted good veggie Indian food in Vancouver, though I've searched.

The food at Saravanaa Bhavan is very different from all the veggie Indian food I've had before. Perhaps this is because they are South Indian, or perhaps their cooks are particularly inventive. I don't know, but no matter how many times I go, they never let me down, with consistent quality and new surprises.

One of the best things about Saravanaa Bhavan is the variety of fresh breads. In addition to bringing you a fresh Naan, they also have these delicious lentil-based donut-like bread called Vada, amazing steamed rice cakes called Idli, some kind of deep-fried chapati-like bread, and even a whole fresh dosa. And of course, pappadum with great coconut chutney and tomato chutney. Everything is steaming fresh. This is what my plate looked like:

A crazy heaping mess of all sorts of amazing little items! That's why I love this place. I can revel in the delight of sampling all sorts of flavors, rather than slogging through a boring heaping mass of one dish with exactly the same flavor for the same price. I had about 12 separate items during this meal, every one of them perfectly delicious and totally unlike the others.

Even the desserts are amazing and unlike anything I've seen anywhere before. No gulab jamun in sight here. During our last visit they offered a curious spongecake-like confection infused with saffron juice and a wonderful substance that looked like tapioca at first sight but tasted nothing like the typical tapioca pudding dessert you find in Indian restaurants. They clearly are inventing their own new desserts.

Another great little touch is that each table has its own pitcher of water by default, so no having to stretch out that last quarter glass of water or struggle to get a waiter's attention to get some water. And anyway, the waiters here are everywhere and very attentive. Kweepo and I were asked no less than three times if we needed anything else.

The price for the buffet is $10.99 on weekdays and $11.99 on weekends. I don't know why the price increases on the weekend. The bill for Kweepo and I came out to $30 even including tips, which is admittedly a bit pricey for Indian food (I remember the buffets in Houston were $5). But it's hard to find good Indian food OR cheap Indian food in Vancouver, and Saravanaa Bhavan at least is reliably good and fresh, so I don't feel ripped off when I eat there.

I just noticed in the photo that they advertise a "$5 takeout lunch box". Now that's the price I want to pay for lunch. I will have to check this out.

I didn't know this until I checked their website, but apparently this is a chain. They have four locations total. The other three are all in Ontario.