Open the fridge in many South Indian homes, and you’ll probably find a tub of dosa batter bubbling with fermentation. Perhaps it’s homemade, or it could be from the number of brands selling premixed batter in South Asian markets across the country. It’s a kitchen staple like anything else, unremarkable except to those for whom the dosa remains unfamiliar. Which, in America, is a lot of people.
Dosa Kitchen wants to speak to those people, who may have encountered dosa in a restaurant or more likely never at all. The brand, born out of a food truck run by husband-wife team Nash Patel and Leda Scheintaub in Brattleboro, Vermont, has been selling premade dosa batter throughout New England since 2022, with plans to expand into other areas — the batter will soon be available at Kalustyan’s in New York City. The batter doesn’t include the preservatives or flavorings common in other dosa batters, and the packaging, with a lightly Indian design flare, describes the batter as a “ready-to-pour pancake.” It emphasizes that it’s gluten free, vegan, and “stone ground.” Illustrations show how to expertly spread the batter on a hot griddle for a classic dosa, but they also suggest making pancakes and waffles. According to Scheintaub, “[The packaging is] meant to educate people on what dosa batter is and what you can use it for.”
Dosa Kitchen has joined other South Asian American brands like Brooklyn Delhi, Heritage Kulfi, and Peepal People, which are sold outside traditionally South Asian stores, making them something non-Asian people could casually encounter. These brands are juggling staying true to culinary tradition, making room for experimentation, and trying to explain it all to people who still think “Indian food” begins and ends with garlic naan.
It feels like South Asian food is in a constant state of introduction in America. “We hope Doosra introduces anyone unfamiliar with Indian snacks to the wide array of both sweet & savory treats we and the broader SouthAsian culture has to offer,” writes Doosra, an Indian snack brand. Droosh, a spice company started by three Indian American women, says it was “conceived to demystify Indian flavors and make them more accessible.”
Often, the mission is not just to introduce, but to correct previous misconceptions; as Kolkata Chai Co. explains, “Chai has been repeatedly bastardized and appropriated in the Western world. We’re putting it all on the line to make sure our culture and traditions are represented accurately and honestly.” Or as Tasting India writes, “We want to shatter the stereotypes that have plagued Indian cuisine; and showcase the versatility of spices across global culinary traditions.”
There of course is a first time for everything. But almost 60 years after the Immigration and Nationality Act abolished the National Origins Formula and paved the way for South Asian immigration, Indians now represent the second biggest immigrant population in the country, which of course doesn’t account for other South Asian countries, Indo-Caribbean populations, or other various South Asian diasporas. And yet Indian flavors have not achieved popularity and familiarity in American culture the way, say, Mexican or Chinese flavors have. In 2014, Scheintaub told Eater that dosa was becoming a craze, perhaps in the same way chai or turmeric have inched their way into Americans’ culinary vocabulary, but a decade later the Indian diaspora is still explaining. Could dosas finally be next?
Patel grew up eating and making dosa in Hyderabad, India, and met Scheintaub while waiting tables at a South Indian restaurant in New York. So when the two moved from New York to Vermont in 2009, Scheintaub says, “we were trying to figure out what Nash should do. He made the best dosas, so we had this crazy idea of opening a dosa food truck.” They began selling dosa at the farmers market, where business was initially slow. “Trying something new is not that easy around here. It’s not like in New York where people are always wanting to try new things,” says Scheintaub. But gradually, they began to talk to more farmers market customers about what dosa is, emphasizing the sort of buzzwords — gluten free, sugar free, vegan, fermented — customers were interested in.
They opened a truck in 2014 serving dosa with Patel’s family recipes for beef keema and sambar, but also Vermont-ish innovations, like dosa with melted Vermont cheddar, or the dosa dog, a hot dog served in a thick uttapam with cheese, sauerkraut, and their mysore chutney. Dosa Kitchen’s instagram and cookbook are also full of “non-traditional” inspiration, like dosa topped with smoked salmon, dosa blintzes, and pancakes stuffed with ham and Gruyere.
The dosa has often been described to Western audiences as a South Indian crepe. On one hand, I balk at all such comparisons that try to make Asian food more appealing and familiar by using a French word. But on the other hand, dosa is just batter made of grains and water, like dozens of similar recipes around the world. How else do you convince someone to try something they’ve never eaten, other than comparing it to something they may already like?
Scheintaub admits she’s heard people say these more modern dosas are sacreligious. I get it. Even though South Asian people are behind all these brands, it’s like watching a band you’ve only seen in 50-person basement clubs play Madison Square Garden, thrilling and knee-jerk unsettling to see all these people like the same thing you like. Why should they get to enjoy something they only heard about a month ago? So often, Indian cuisine is watered down for Western tastes and palates or renamed something “easier to pronounce;” to paraphrase a politician, like it was dropped out of a coconut tree and divorced from the context of all that came before it. That knee-jerk is entirely justified.
But it’s also small, defensive thinking that punishes members of any given diaspora for trying something new — whether that’s dosa batter with no preservatives, chutney pizza, or popcorn seasoning with chaat masala — and punishes anyone else for being curious about something they’ve never had before. Perhaps dosa becoming a kitchen staple is the wrong way to think of it. This isn’t about convincing everyone to like one thing. Instead, it’s about ending the cycle of introduction. It’s saying dosa is here and has been here. Would you like to participate or not?
If you look at the state of South Asian cuisine, both in South Asia and in its diasporas, you’ll see a whole mess of experimentation. In her new cookbook, Amrikan, Khushbu Shah includes a recipe for dosa with maple syrup. In India, dosas are served with a wide variety of fillings, including processed cheese, Chinese noodles, and chocolate. Saying you can only use dosa batter but for a narrow range of traditional recipes is like saying you can’t use white bread for anything but a ham and cheese sandwich. “Dosa is really like a blank canvas for so many things,” says Scheintaub. “It doesn’t feel disingenuous to do other things besides curry with it, because it would be a wasted opportunity.”
It had never occurred to me to make dosa at home. Despite spending decades ranting to anyone who will listen that Indian food is not difficult to make at home, the dosa has seemed to me, frankly, difficult. But Dosa Kitchen’s batter smelled like a dosa restaurant, and I was bolstered by the fact that Indians have been doing this at home for centuries.
For my first time, I think I did pretty well. There is a learning curve, but my dosas were thin and mostly round and had a perfect tang. I paired them with a traditional potato masala, and the next day, my partner and I made steamed idli with chutney. But then, they had an idea. What if we used the batter to make thicker pancakes to wrap around leftover masala, eggs, and American cheese? A kind of Indian-ish breakfast burrito? I’d never thought of something like that before. It sounded great.