Denny F.
Yelp
This is a ham-handed marketing exercise masquerading as a restaurant, an end-to-end charlatan from the way it presents itself on its website, to what ends up on your plate:
- not a single one of the photos on surya's website, which the owner has apparently posted here on yelp as well, is of its own food. A fraction of them have creative commons licenses but the vast majority are stolen from recipe websites and food bloggers, including some fledgling ones that do not yet have much of a following. (Right click and search with google lens to see for yourself). Utterly reprehensible behavior on the part of the owner, who will probably end up blaming the contractor they hired to develop their website, as if it could not be more obvious at first glance. In hosting these photos, Yelp itself is taking part.
- the food we got last night ranged from bad to pedestrian, and needlessly to say not a single item resembled the photos on the website:
1. (2/5) Podi Idli. The idli had a loose consistency and the podi was flavorless.
2. (1/5) Rava masala dosa. The dosa was completely soggy. It is understandably difficult to do takeout dosa properly but when your entire operation is take out (Surya has no dine-in) you really ought to have this figured out. Madras dosa co. does this far more effectively.
3. (1/5) Curd rice. This is supposed to be yogurt and rice with some garnishes. What we received tasted like equal parts sour cream, yogurt, rice, and cucumbers, and was excessively seasoned.
4. (3/5) Methi paratha. This was fine. It would be hard to get this wrong, especially if you are reheating from frozen (which Surya almost certainly does, considering the sheer size of their menu and how quickly they turn out the food).
5. (3/5) Mango lassi. Came bottled, presumably not made in-house.
6. (2/5) Salt lassi. Came bottled, presumably not made in-house.
7. (4/5) Healthy sprout salad. This was very good!
8. (1/5) Maharani bhindi masala. Mostly sauce, very little okra, and (again, unsurprisingly, given all the theft) bearing little resemblance to the photo on the website.
9. (1/5) Chole palak. Very saucy, not much in the way of chole or spinach flavor.
- I do not normally complain about food prices but it is incredibly expensive. $16 for a soggy dosa. $18 for sour cream and curd rice. $12 for reheated paratha. $6 for bottled lassi. $21 for goopy okra.
- I have to assume that at least part of the explanation for the priciness is all the cash that they've plowed into branding and packaging, which are both elaborate and bizarre. The bags the food came in featured comic depictions of white people in traditional Indian clothing emblazoned with United States flag patterns which ... I'm assuming is supposed to mean something? See the photos.
- The restaurant appends a few nonsense words at the end of the name of each dish, as if to give them each a sense of "Indian flair". Very few of them make a damn bit of sense -- "Stuffed aloo tikki puducherry"? Puducherry has nothing to do with that dish. "Masala dosa (potato) Super Machi"? Super machi is a Telegu film that has nothing to do with the dish. An entire section is called "Indian Chinese - Chin Chin Choo", the latter bit of which is, I guess, both an old Bollywood song and a a bit of Global South-South racism.
Since neither the restaurant nor Yelp has bothered to address the way that Surya has stolen other creators' images and content for commercial purposes I thought I would add annotate some of the photos with their original sources.