As far as chain restaurants go, Sarvanaa Bhavan is not McDonald’s. With locations as far-flung as Orlando, New Delhi, Bahrain, and Paris, Sarvanaa Bhavan offers food infinitely more substantial than a 1,000 calorie burger or a milkshake of incredibly dubious origins. Rather, Sarvanaa Bhavan specializes in serving vegetarian South Indian specialties.

Nestled in the Upper West Side, Sarvanaa Bhavan offers a rapid-service variant of the Indian restaurants that populate the East Village and Murray Hill, boasting a remarkably inexpensive menu. Now, regarding the meatless content of the menu’s items, I find myself in the Anthony Bourdain school of thought in that strict adherence to vegetarianism is a “first world luxury,” but like Bourdain, I am able to make an exception to Indian cuisine, which is the perfect combination of textures and spices. To drink, I had a 1947 lager (that year is incredibly relevant to the history of India, as it marks the year they gained independence from the United Kingdom), while Chelsea had a Taj Mahal lager. Both were nice light beers that offered a good balance to the spicy and piquant selections on the menu.

Our meal started with garlic naan. Naan is a staple of Indian cuisine, a delicious flatbread that is just as marvelous by itself as it is when seasoned with garlic and ghee. Ghee is a clarified form of butter that is deliciously salty and full of flavor. Another appetizer we sampled was the idly, a simple fritter-like item that is like a grainy pancake. It was served with a spiced ghee-based sauce. Needless to say, it was marvelous.

We chose another mainstay of southern Indian cuisine, the dosa. Dosas are made from rice and lentils, which are cooked to make a massive pancake-like item, which is at least 24 inches in diameter. Served rolled up, the dosa is often served with a stuffing of some sort, whether it is cheese, vegetables, or a starch. We opted for the milagaipodi dosa, which was a standard dosa topped with an array of piquant and savory spices.

One deceptive quality of the dosa is that because it is so large, it is almost safe to assume it is a completely filling item. However, doasas are quite thin. On their own, they are a filling dish, ideal as a source of carbs and proteins. We also sampled the vegetable biryani. Biryani is an interesting dish in that its origins are in Iran, a divinely spiced rice dish that is just as good without meat as it is with it. Biryani is also a featured dish in Sri Lankan cuisine, spiced differently according to local palates and sensibilities.

The South Indian variant of vegetable biryani is quite good, full of flavor and consisting of pleasantly familiar flavors like peas, and carrots along with chunks of eggplant. While we ate our biryani, I remarked to Chelsea that this place is ideal as “Indian for people who don’t like Indian food,” that is to say, the new flavors brought about by such exotic spices as bay leaves, cardamom, and the fantastic combination of curry and coconut milk.

The last item we sampled was the jalfrezi (also known as jhal frezi or zalfrezi, an example of the rather open-ended transliteration of Indian languages into our language). The jalfrezi was a fantastic curry dish based around julienned onion, tomato, chili, and capsicum (which we in the West know better as bell peppers). It was not too spicy, with a slight sweetness to it. Despite the array of flavors, I could not help but notice the absence of protein in the meal – being a vegetarian restaurant, I had hoped for an egg served in the bryani, but to no avail.

For dessert, we enjoyed gulab jamun, which is a fried ball based on milk and paneer (also spelled ponir), which is essentially a diverse Indian famer’s cheese, served in a honey and rosewater-based sauce. It was a delicious finish to a fantastic meal.

The only criticism I have of the venue has nothing to do with the food (which was marvelous, although the absence of meat was obvious to both myself and my omnivorous companion) but rather the service. As we observed, the hardest working people in the restaurant were the owners, who recognized mere eye contact for a cue that our waters needed to be refilled.

That said, it would be unfair to judge a restaurant solely on the service, especially one that focuses so heavily on quickly prepared dishes. It is not a place to sit, eat, enjoy bottle after bottle of wine while discussing deep and esoteric subject matters. Not in the least. It is a place to eat quickly, enjoy what is served to you, and leave as quickly as you came in. It isn’t a bad economic model, one I’ll gladly take over McDonald’s any day.

Although we did not sample anything from it, Saravanaa Bhavan offers a Thali menu, that is, an all-in-one meal consisting of specialties from all across the menu. This seemed to be an apt summary of Saravanaa’s main clientele, the people who will gladly opt for bold flavors instead of homogenous meat-like products of dubious origins, willing to spend 15 dollars on a lunch dish that is both delicious and nutritious.

I can easily see Saravanaa Bhavan being a perfect hot-spot in the Upper West Side as a place for both deliveries and quick, convenient meals without any fancy frills attached to it. There is no live in-house music like many of the Indian joins in the East Village, nor is there much in the way of sheer ambiance. That said, however, the food is delicious, not just merely functional. Compared to the prices of other Indian restaurants in the area, Upper West Siders should be grateful.

Photos (except for top) by Chelsea Herman

Saravanaa Bhavan
413 Amsterdam Avenue
212-721-7755