Ananda Bhavan Restaurant

Although I dislike Chinese vegeterian food to the core cos of all their mock meats and fried beehoon, I quite like vegeterian cusine. Especially if it's Indian cos they whip up such nice dishes that make you forget you're eating vegeterian. Ananda Bhavan is a 100% vegeterian restaurant, and inside the restaurant, one whole side of the wall is dedicated to information on why being vegeterian is better than being an omnivore. I've walked past this place quite a few times, when my family was crazy about the 24hr shopping at Mustafa Centre. It's an airconditioned restaurant, and looks a bit like a fast food chain - you have to order at a counter, and collect your food from another counter.

I had the Paper Mysoore Masala Thosai ($4.50), which I ordered wrongly - I actually told the lady at the counter that I didn't want anything spicy. Dunno how I ended up with the extremely spicy thosai. I like the condiments that they gave too, my favourite being the whitish one, which is some non-spicy coconut thing. The thosai is really huge, and is spilling over the tray. It's filled with potatoes cooked with lots of spice. The mysoore masala thosai also comes in a a non-spicy version, which is essentially the same thing without the spicey sauce.
Thairul Vadi (sp? not too sure about the name either) which was what the lady at the counter recommended when I told her my dish was too hot so I was ordering another. I think it's $3.50 if I'm not wrong. Or it might have been $2.80? I can't find my receipt :/ Anyway, the yoghurt was thick and cooling, and there were little bits of grated ginger and carrots, including some herbs. Though I didn't quite like the texture of the cold vadi (there's a deep fried version which looked extremely tempting, but the lady told me it's spicy). My Iced Masala Tea ($2.80), which I couldn't really taste since my tongue was on fire :( But I'll definitely want to come back and eat the Kashimiri naan (sp?) and cottage cheese vegetable dish that Julie has been raving about!

Apart from my wrong order, the lady at the counter was extremely helpful (especially since we were pointing madly and asking what was this and that and being slow in ordering). Best of all, the place is cool, clean and brightly lit. And the prices are extremely reasonable - I'll definitely drop by again to try more vegeterian food :)

Plus, there's this almond drink thing that I want to try - it's yellow and thick and looks really interesting - too bad I wasn't feeling that adventerous that day.

Ananda Bhavan Restaurant
95 Syed Alwi Road

Tel 62979522
Opposite Mustafa, along the side road

Ananda Bhavan Restaurant Revisited

We wanted to go to some tze char place near Novena, but then it was renovating and hence closed. So we ended up eating Indian vegeterian food at Ananda Bhavan Restaurant.

I really like the sauce with the bright orange colour in the North Indian Set ($6 something). It's just like butter chicken sauce, just that it has cottage cheese in place of chicken. Wonder what it's called? (It's called paneer butter masala, thanks Marky!)

There's also a whole lots of dips/sauces including yoghurt, some strange tasting (to me) stewed cabbage, some dhal (?) based curry which was pretty spicy, my favourite cottage cheese, and a vegetable curry.

The set comes with 2 naans and a whole bowl of rice (which has mushrooms and other spices) and a chaapati(?). There's even a desesrt (see the little brown ball at the 7o'clock position) which is some flour ball drenched in syrup.

I know my knowledge of Indian food is pretty bad.

I also had the Paper Masala Thosai ($3.50) which is filled with potatoes cooked in a yellow sauce. My favourite dip was white grated coconut based one, since the others were too spicy.

The spicy version of my thosai, the Mysore Masala Thosai ($4.50), which is essentially the same thing as the Paper Masala Thosa, just that it's really very spicy (I couldn't finish it the last time). Kulfi ($3.70)

My must-eat dessert whenever I have Indian food. It's extremely sweet, and has lots of Indian spices inside - spotted some cardamon and some leaf. Not too sure what they are though.

The Kulfi isn't called Kulfi in the menu, but it's under the non-descript name of 'ice cream'.

Like the last time, the cashiers were really patient with us taking a long time to decide and answering our many of questions (like is this dish spicy?). Saw quite a few tourists dining here during lunch - perhaps it's written up on some Lonely planet guide or Timeout or something?

Ananda Bhavan Restaurant

95 Syed Alwi Road
Tel 62979522

Opposite Mustafa, along the side road