Growing up in Munster, Indiana, Ravi Nagubadi would eat dosa as often as possible.
There was always dosa batter in the fridge because his mom would make a batch every few days.
“We [Nagubadi and his brother] would come home and eat dosa for snack, for breakfast, Saturdays and Sundays. We ate as much as we could. She would make different types of dosas too, like moong dal dosa. We could never get enough. Even to this day, I’ll have a dosa every day.”
Today he’s bringing that love of dosa — a South Indian delicacy made from a sourdough rice and lentil batter and cooked to a golden crisp on a griddle — to the Chicago area with his food stall Art of Dosa at Revival Food Hall in the Loop.
While he ate a lot of dosa, he didn’t have a desire to cook it. That changed toward the end of his college years at Northwestern University in 1995, when he embarked on a spiritual journey, getting into meditation and switching to a vegetarian diet.
But it was hard to find good vegetarian food and he didn’t know how to cook.
“When you’re in college, the only thing you could get was a grilled cheese sandwich,” Nagubadi said. So he turned to his mom, Aruna, who is “the best cook ever,” to learn how to make the dishes he grew up loving and eating.
He started off learning curries then moved on to dosa. After he learned how to cook from his mom, “a passion was born that I never knew was even there,” he said. A self-admitted perfectionist, he set out to perfect dosas over the following years, experimenting in his spare time and doing little parties here and there.
In 2011, he was invited to have a stall at Veggie Fest Chicago in Naperville. That first year, he, with the help of his mom, sold about 1,000 dosas. By 2017, they were selling around 3,000. That’s when he began exploring opening a restaurant. After some “mishaps” with the brick and mortar that ultimately didn’t pan out, Art of Dosa opened at Revival Food Hall the day after Christmas 2019.
The signature dish is the masala dosa plate, which comes with a large, paper-thin crispy rice and lentil dosa, which is then torn by hand to scoop up a traditional South Indian potato curry with masala made from scratch, fresh cabbage, sambar (soup), a housemade light and airy coconut chutney made with chickpeas, and his special orange “gunpowder” spice blend (he has several varieties). It’s “endearingly” called that because it packs quite the fiery punch with 20 different spices including chili powder, but it’s not so explosive that it just burns the inside of your mouth and flares up your nostrils.
“It’s a really good combination of heat and flavor together,” said Nagubadi, an engineer by trade.
When it comes to getting the requisite crispness of dosa, Nagubadi said the proportions, how long the batter ferments, how it’s spread on the griddle and the heat are all important factors. It’s so exact that once he wrote out the directions for a cooking class and it was 12 pages long.
The recipes are based on his mom’s, with Nagubadi’s tweaks and engineering background.
“She’s been so supportive of getting [Art of Dosa] out there. And she’s really proud. And I’m proud of her because this is a representation of her to the world, our food and I’m just a vehicle for it.”
In addition to the traditional masala dosa plate, Art of Dosa also offers dosa wraps featuring a variety of fillings such as the 65 Dosa (vegan soy protein marinated with spicy lime, chili, cilantro, curry leaf flavor, served with fresh cabbage, vegan curry leaf mayo sauce, and sides of extra sauce and a green gunpowder spice blend that incorporates poblano pepper); the Buffalo Dosa Wrap (soy protein marinated in housemade vegan Buffalo sauce based on the popular wing seasoning, fresh shredded cabbage and carrots, vegan curry leaf mayo sauce and green gunpowder spice blend); and the Ramen Dosa Wrap (gluten-free ramen noodles, vegan soy protein “katsu,” a meatless version of the traditional crispy chicken or pork Japanese dish, kimchi slaw, vegan Sriracha mayo sauce and black gunpowder spice blend).
“We do a lot to try to really bridge the gap to help educate the world about eating dosas. [Traditionally] this isn’t a dish that you can easily just grab and go,” Nagubadi said. “We wanted to build something that pays the right homage to the ancient and traditional, but brings dosa into the modern mainstream world as well with the right combination for all different flavor palates.”
Art of Dosa reopened in October 2021 after a pandemic hiatus, and Nagubadi said the restaurant lost a bit of momentum but he’s optimistic about the future. As an engineering executive at an online company when he’s not working on Art of Dosa, Nagubadi has created the systems to scale his restaurant and built a team he trusts, so they run the show when he’s at his day job. All of it means means long weeks, but he is able to take care of his family and send his kids to college.
“I really do want to grow Art of Dosa into something bigger than the one location. But for now, I’m happy, even though it’s been hard to get it to be really profitable, because nobody’s coming to work [post-pandemic].”
But he said he’s “playing the long game.”
“I’m patient, I know that it’ll get better. And I know there’s gonna be some other great locations, we’ll be able to open up at the right times. But I’m in a place right now where I’m just really happy where it runs by itself. ... People really like the food and they love going there.”
On a recent Friday morning, Anindya Jana, a graduate research assistant at the University of Notre Dame, was sitting at a table with the masala dosa plate in front of him. Jana, who is currently living in South Bend, was on the hunt for dosa and heard about the Art of Revival food hall.
Making an OK sign with his fingers when asked if the dosa plate met his expectations, he said “tastes like India.”
Moong Dal Dosa (aka Pesarattu)
Courtesy Ravi Nagubadi; This dosa is part of Art of Dosa’s breakfast menu.
Ingredients:
- 1 cup whole moong dal (available at any Indian grocery store)
- 1/2 cup rice flour
- 1 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt (to taste)
- 1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
- 2-3 cups water
- Sunflower oil
- Optional: Non-stick cooking spray
- Optional toppings: finely diced onions, chopped green chilis, chopped cilantro, cumin seeds, minced ginger
Directions for the batter
1. Wash and drain moong dal twice, then soak in twice the volume of water for 1 hour, then drain again after fully soaking
2. Add drained moong dal, rice flour, salt and black pepper to a blender with 2 cups water. Blend to a puree (until all shells of the moong dal have disappeared), adding extra water as needed (the longer you soak the less water needed). Consistency should be thick but pourable smoothly (similar to pancake batter).
3. The batter is now ready (no fermentation required for this dosa).
Directions
1. Heat a flat non-stick skillet or griddle (on low-medium heat if using gas heat).
2. Optionally lightly spray non-stick spray and spread with a paper towel until you no longer see any spray. This step only needed once.
3. Test griddle heat by splashing a small sprinkle of water, which should crackle and evaporate, but not too quickly. If too hot, cool down with extra sprinkles of water and dry with kitchen towel
4. Before each dosa, sprinkle water and dry/clean thoroughly with a kitchen towel.
5. Pour a pancake-size amount of batter onto the griddle or skillet with a ladle or circular serving spoon (size depends on your cooking surface space).
6. Immediately, spread batter with a ladle or spoon from inside outwards in a spiral shape — very small rings in the center then larger as you make your way out, each ring overlapping slightly over the last until the batter has been completely spread out.
7. Avoid spreading over the same spot more than once, and avoid overlapping rings too much to keep dosa thinner. If you make a mistake, don’t go back and correct it - keep spreading outwards. If you end up with any empty spaces, fill with slight drops of batter and spread.
8. After steam coming from dosa subsides, drizzle droplets of sunflower oil onto the dosa and spread with a basting brush or soft spatula.
9. Sprinkle light amount of optional toppings all over and let cook with the dosa.
10. Let dosa cook through until you can see thin spiral rings turn brown. When browned through, lift dosa with a spatula and let back down to give it some air to crisp (but DO NOT FLIP for best texture). Let cook until crispy but still pliable.
11. Roll into a hollow cylinder or fold over in half loosely.
Serve with your favorite chutney (coconut chutney and/or ginger pickle are best). Surface heat, batter consistency, spreading technique, non-stick layer and cook time all make a difference. Add optional toppings, if desired.
