Ulavacharu Tiffins

At this vegetarian offshoot of Ulavacharu, a southern Indian restaurant in Sunnyvale, multicourse tiffins are the focus. Ulavacharu’s style of cooking is distinctly homestyle and hearty, from the silky and rich pongal rice ($6.99) to the thick and buttery mysore pak ($5), loaded with cardamom flavor and perfect with a cup of tea. When dining in, you eat lentils and rice, steamed rice cakes or roti from metal trays, with the other, varied elements of the meal — chutneys, spicy lentil stews and deeply flavored sauces — presented in small metal bowls. Here, every dish is presented as a consortium of flavors: set meals whose components are meant to complement each other.

The dosas are really some of the best in the Bay Area.

The menu features 22 variations, with myriad fillings and batter mixins. The lacy onion rava dosas ($8.99) are made with a thin, unfermented batter of semolina, rice and wheat flours splashed over sliced red onions on a hot griddle. The dosa is then folded three times, much like Chinese jianbing, and served with a spicy and sour tomato and lentil sambar and coconut, tomato, peanut and ginger chutneys. I hear that these accoutrements are refilled generously when you’re dining in.

Sadly, takeout is less extravagant, with everything in plastic containers and foil and no refills. I ate my dosa on the trunk of my car, exposed to the same ambient seasoning that heightens every taco truck dinner. A bit janky, but it only got me more excited to come back later and finally have the tiffins the way they’re meant to be eaten.