Saravana Bhavan

Delicious food. Great spot to hang out with friends and family. Pure vegetarian restaurant. Authentic South Indian food. Good hospitality

Saravana Bhavan is an Indian vegetarian restaurant which makes you feel you are actually in India. They serve both buffet style and a la carte. The menu is extensive but if you know what Indian veg dish you are graving it should be rather easy to order. The staff was friendly and I got served really quick.
The food was good, I had a very tasty (and just spicy enough) chili paneer and a plain dosa. The dosa comes with 4 different ‘sauces’ (in India they would call it chutneys but not all are real chutneys I guess) which makes it a great meal. You can of course order a variety of dosas like paneer dosa or masala dosa but the plain one is actually quite good.
The dosa was great and tasy but if it would have been really crispy I would have given 4 stars because I really liked the place and the food.

I feel like I should start this review by saying that the dosa in this place are good. Like 5 stars good. Crispy and delicious with the perfect amount of perfectly spiced filling. The lassi is also super good. And the prices are very good, less than £4 for most of the dosas. The starter (bhajis) and the tea we had didn’t have enough spice, but were ok. So why only 3 stars? The waiters were unbelievably rude. They ignored us when we first came in, and were super slow to come take our order, in the end we had to call them over. The restaurant was almost completely empty, and there were about 6 or 7 waiters working. When they finally came, the service was very curt and sarcastic. When we asked for a menu, they literally brought one menu, I had to get up and ask for two more menus. I would go back here for the food, but with lower expectations of the service.

I was craving indo chinese and we came to the right place to satisfy our craving! Although it was a bit oily, everything was delicious! We ordered the Hakka noodles which was just the right amount of spicy, the dry manchurian which was yummm and crispy, and the chili paneer which was pretty typical. I would definitely go again!

We love this place, and have actually been to both the Tooting and East Ham location — that’s the only one negative thing I can find, is that it’s a bit of treck to get to.
But the food is worth it, oh so worth it. We generally have a dosa and/​or uttapam and then sit there giggling and reminiscing about travels in India while gobbling down our food. Dosas are HUGE (literally a food and a half) and we’ve had both the masala and ghee dosa; I might vote for the ghee dosa in a pinch to get more of the buttery deliciousness.
We’ve also had the Gobi 65 (which the husband loves more than me) and paneer dishes. You also see a lot of South Asian families eating the Idly –which aren’t our favourite food so we never get them — but they clearly taste good here judging by the amount of people eating them!
I had the South Indian Meal the last time, and have to say that might be my next staple. I am not kidding, it came with at least 10 different dishes plus rice, puri, chappati PLUS two sweets. It was all great and I once again found that it tasted, basically, like India. Totally transported to all the lunch Thalis in Tamil Nadu.
It’s always worth the drive, staff are friendly and food is fast. They don’t serve any kind of meat or alcohol or allow it on the premises — which I thought was obvious until we heard some guy ask if he could BYO at the next table. Oh yeah, and it’s Cheap a capital C. We couldn’t finish our food, and it came to £17.

Being a vegetarian these guys meet all the criteria — very good quality food, very good service friendly staff good prices.
The Dosa is brilliant, the vada & sambar very good and the chilli paneer is excellent.
What I like is that despite being very busy at times they still are happy to customise the food!
Must visit for everyone who loves vegetarian food

The food at this Indian chain is usually quite solid. I found service very slow (though polite) at this branch. And we did hang out for a few hours, waiting for an errant family member… lol.
There are lots of things on the menu, but for sheer crispy fun I say go for the plain dosa and order more stuff on the side, like the devil potatoes! I don’t personally like the deep fried items, like Gobi 65, but most people seem to love them, along with the paneer dishes which my brother tends to inhale!
One thing is a must — order the lassi! Salty if you are cool like me, or mango if you are not feeling adventurous ;) The super-​low prices mean that this place will always be a regular haunt for my family!

Finally I visited this place nearly after 4 years and 3 months since I last visited in CHENNAI, India. If your are a pure vegetarian; you should visit Saravana Bhavan. Specialist in South Indian Cuisine with mouthwatering food.
The atmosphere is very Indian and hell of a crowd. The waiters are ok good service but all the waitresses weren’t aware of the MENU.. .. may be there are employed to to circle around & attract customers.. Lol
I visited this place with four of my friends and we ordered from appetizers to main courses, I should say it was a heavy meal which I’ve not had for a long time basically we ate like PIGs Lol. .. In the end it only costed £47 which was not bad at all.
I’ll defiantly visit this place gain very soon.. .