Dosa Garden

Pros:
Excellent food!
Extremely flavorful!
Cons:
Service
Bottom Line: You don’t come to a place like this for the ambiance. You come here strictly for the food. Do yourself a favor and get the chicken dosa.

Delivery — food was right on time from seamless app. What was supposed to be hot, was hot. What was supposed to be cold was cold.
The food was the best delivery so far in Staten Island.

Excellent food, lion beer is a bargain at $ 4 for 12oz. Asked for medium spicy and it was perfect! Friendly staff and excellent service! Recommend for eat in or take out.

Since it has been several years over which I’ve gone to this restaurant I can say this with certainty: If you’re with a party of all women, your portions will be substantially smaller than those of men. About 20−25% smaller. I’ve noticed this in African and East Indian restaurants. Do they think we’re fools and don’t notice we’re being ripped off?

We waited 17 minutes to be acknowledged. We were seated and that was it. My boyfriend and I are lifelong Staten Island residents. We never heard of this place until Anthony Bourdain ate here. So we decided to try it. Epic fail. Service was nonexitstent. We walked out. After 17 minutes. Your establishment needs to stop riding on Bourdain’s coattails.

First, let me start off with this: I love dosas. Its my favorite cuisine from India.
I came in on a Tuesday afternoon and was the only one in there. I had the idly vada appetizer which was pretty good. Unfortunately, the coconut chutney and soup it came with was pretty sad. The coconut had a hint of freezer burnt in it, and the soup wasn’t that flavorful.
The dosa was pretty bad. Instead of a crispy lentil rice shell, it was soggy and greasy. It also looked really unappetizing, like a melted face. Not like the kind of face melting you’d experience from seeing a brutal death metal band like Suffocation, no, it looked straight up like 80s Pushead art.
The service was pretty poor. I had to keep asking for water.
If you’re in a bad pinch for vegetarian food, I’d stick with the appetizers. If you really want south Indian food, take the ferry, get on the 6, and go to 28^th and Lexington.

This place used to have decent food, but lately, their servings shrunk and their dishes lack the flavor we were used to.
The worst thing about this place is their statue of a waitress. She has a mean look chiseled on her face. She lacks manners and surely does not want to be there. And if you try to confront her, she’ll come up with a mean reply. Apparently she does not realize that her tip relies on a friendly and helpful service. If you want your food come on time, or appetizers appear before your main dish, you’re in the wrong place.
This place needs to fire their staff and start new before thinking of a comeback.
I’m sure other restaurants don’t need this advice and want my business more.
Thank you mean waitress!

So so yummy. I got the dosa lunch special and my hubby got the non vegetarian curry special. I was so sure it wasn’t going to be enough but we both rolled out of there when we were done. I get what people were saying about the waitress. She wasn’t overly smiley but honestly that’s an American thing. Wait staff in other countries aren’t all about the flair. She was young but courteous. She refilled our waters and was prompt with clearing dishes and bring the check. Not sure what else you need. The food was flavorful and fresh. We will be back!

They really need to do something about their unsmiling waitress and her attitude. Also, Friday night, we’re the only ones in the place and it takes 35 minutes to get our appetizers??? When we ask why, the unsmiling waitress tells us rudely that they are busy with take-​out orders.
They appear to recycle the same curry in appetizers and every other dish. We gave this place three tries and we’re done with them.

I recommend the masala dosa with vada/​idli. 9 dollars and tastes amazing. Had it 3 days in a row on my lunch break because it was so good.

Best kept secret in Staten Island! Everything on the menu is delicious and extremely vegan friendly. Almost every vegetarian item on the menu can be veganized with coconut milk. The Malai Kofta is my favorite dish, absolutely delicious. My favorite restaurant on the island. Great prices as well.

We’ve been coming to Dosa Garden for years. It’s a good place to go when you want a casual meal, without spending much. We usually get their shrimp fry or mutton fry, along with their masala dosa & chicken biryani.
We used to get their naan & curries, but they weren’t very flavorful. Since their signature dish is their dosas, we decided to stick to that. Their chicken biryani is delicious, as well. Very flavorful!
The staff is nice, attentive, but not irritating.
My only recommendation to the restaurant is to please take care of your restroom. Usually the bathroom is freezing, or barely any soap, or low on toilet paper. I usually opt out of using their restroom.

The food is good but the wait is too long sometimes. Love the shrimp fry as appetizer and any biryani. Parking is ok– have a gravel lot so park at your own risk.

We had very very low expectations coming into this place, based on Unilocal reviews. 10pm Sunday night, the place was empty. We had tried going elsewhere but that place was closed so we found ourselves here.
We ordered a Masala dosa, chettinadu chicken and palak paneer. We asked for it to be spicy. And guess what, everything was delicious. This makes me realise, don’t listen to everything Unilocal tells you. Lovely level of spiciness, the dosa was crisp and fresh, the palak was freshly made and not too over blended, a common mistake of other Indian restaurants in NYC.
I really enjoyed my meal. And I’m of South Asian origin, and grew up eating south Indian food in Singapore. Give this place a chance.

Hi All,
Should not even receive one star for this place. I ordered Tandoori Chicken from this place & the chicken i got was completely uncooked. Very disappointed & this is a health hazard… Service is very bad. Not sure how they are still operating and not closed…

Never again Dosa Garden.
Forty six dollars and change in the garbage tonight, and I have a tough time throwing money away.
So, some time passed and we were in the mood for something Indian-​ish and we were in Staten Island and thought, lets give Dose Garden another shot.
We opted for take out as we just wanted to relax with a nice meal.
This is a strong statement, but I have to say that this was possibly the worst meal I have ever been served. Of any food type in any restaurant, on any continent.
My other half actually took a bite of this and that and just put the whole meal straight in the garbage. I, being ravenous and thinking «it can’t be that bad», figured I’d plow through.
Mine followed into the trash shortly.
Let me review what was presented, just so you don’t think I’m a hard hearted person.
And before I do let me assure you I eat out and sometimes the meal is nothing to write home (or Unilocal) about but I manage to make the best of it. Whan it’s stellar or way sub par, people will hear about it but those are few and far between.
OK. Here is what we ordered.
Onion Bahji. What we got were thick onion slices, battered and fried. Greasy and amateur effort at best. The order had 3 of these gems, 2 went in the trash.
Idly — «Steamed lentil and rice patties». Utterly flavorless. And I mean completely without any flavor or hint thereof, and no other redeeming qualities.
Mixed Vegetable Kabab — Now mind you they said they would need some extra time for this dish, which was fine with me.
What was in the container was bone dry 100% RAW rock hard cauliflower, way too many strips of dried out (firm) tofu that one could likely use to resole shoes with, a green pepper quartered and sauteed with a few pieces of onion.
All this covered in bright red (red dye # 40) and just a hint of any other spices powdered on them after which I believe it was put in an oven to give it a baked on look, but not long enough for the heat to actually cook any of the veggies.
One bite of each ingredient hoping I could find anything I would be willing to eat and the whole thing joined the other «stuff» in the trash.
My dinner partner ordered Chicken Makhini, which I did not try but was told it was not only flavorless, but the, ahem, chicken, was in fact firm tofu.
I asked what it tasted like and she responded with «air». It tastes like air. There is no flavor whatsoever.
That and the fact that they are passing tofu off as chicken earns it a place in — go on, guess where.
The supplied sauces and chutneys were quite obviously very watered down.
All in all, horrible barely begins to describe this fare.
It’s not my place to guess why they have gotten a lot of Unilocalers saying they enjoy what they are serving up here, but in my experience, what we were served was not fit to leave anyone’s kitchen, ever.

We should have listened.
At our previous stop on our afternoon-​long food tour through Staten Island’s Sri Lankan food scene, the proprietor had a question for us. ««Who do you go to these other places?» she said, playing with us. «Why not just eat here?»
She reserved some particular scorn for the place across the street, Dosa Garden. She squinted her eyes when we mentioned this was going to be our next step, unwilling to actively denigrate their competition but clearly not a fan of her neighbor.
Dosa Garden wound up being the one dud of our trip, featuring too similar dishes that were in many cases just slight revisions of what’s served in Southern India. I suppose that shouldn’t too surprising considering the overlong, too ambitious menu covered not only The Pearl of the Indian Ocean but the southern half of the subcontinent as well, along with some Indo-​American favorites like the tandoor. (This is the food of Punjab, nearly 2,000 miles away from Columbo.)
We were here to sample their Sri Lankan cuisine, which meant sticking to a few dishes on the side of one page of the menu. We went with pitta and idiyappum (widely known as string hoppers on the Island), along with a kothu roti and idly.
Our waiter took the order without comment, although in hindsight I wish he’d warned us about the incredible volume of samber and chutneys that would come on the side of nearly every one of these creations. There was something I called the ‘reverse McNugget problem’ far too many sauces for the amount of food to pair them with.
Despite the different names, there was a sameness to the fried or steam lentil creations that popped out of the kitchen. It all seemed cut from the same masala, various shaped and sized receptacles for an identical flavor. The kittu was fine, although not up to the level of what’s being prepared across the street.
Dosa Garden loses more points for its dated, too-​stuffy atmosphere. Whereas New Asha has the feeling of a community center, Dosa Garden is stuck in the Raj, with faux-​fancy directions and incredible stillness. We saw no other customers or heard any foreign sounds during our hours in the place.
By trying to please too many audiences — South Indians, Sri Lankans, white Staten Islanders in the mood for something vaguely ‘spicy’ — Dosa Garden serves nobody particularly well.

The place is ok the nana breads was not really that good soft like its suppose barely any layers in the bread… The price is some what reasonable wish the food was little better. The place itself is tiny not that much space. Oh and u gotta tip if u stay there and munch the reason y I got take out lol

A friend recommended the place because she saw that it received good reviews on Unilocal for vegetarian food. I have eaten too much Indian food lately so I was happy to see they offer Sri Lankan food. Unfortunately, there were only a few vegetarian Sri Lankan options to chose from. I got excited that there was an «Indo Chinese» section, as I’ve heard Indian Chinese food is incredible. Unfortunately, the only veg option in this section was veggie fried rice, which the server confirmed isn’t particulalrly interesting or Indian-​influenced.
My friend and I went with the nut-​filled naan, which was so-​so. It was definitely harder then usual naan, which is perhaps because of how the nuts affect the cooking process. We found the taste to be a bit bland. It would benefit greatly from a sauce, but since the bread was slightly sweet, it wouldn’t be appropriate to douse it with some of the usual Indian chutneys. We also went with one of the Sri Lankan appetizers called «string hoppers» or something like that. They were rice noodle cakes with various sauce toppings like tomato, and two coconut toppings. For $ 5, you get a TON of food. Very different from anything I’ve ever had and I enjoyed it.

Remind self to come back here if ever in Staten Island.
Best masala dosas ever. Crispy, thin crêpe with potatoes. Complete with mango lassis, of course. They had me drinking glasses of water after water. I loved everything we ordered. They also have my lamb biryani! Baaa.
Our food took up the entire table.