Sri Ananda Bahwan - Georgetown

If you crave for north or especially south indian food, look no further. The list is so tempting we regretted of having only one stomach... Ordered idly, ragi tosai (ragi dosa) and plain tosai (plain dosa). They came with attached sambar & rasam. But note that if you want chutney, you have to ask for it separately. Especially ragi dosai was a nice surprise - I've been trying to find it when travelling southern India, but I guess I was too south. Now I found it in Penang! And how good it tastes, and how nutritious it is. And completely vegan. Oh, joy! We sat down, but there is also a premade buffet if you want to take-away.

I was so much looking forward to get Indian food in Malaysia. This was my first malay Restaurant. A nice start. Huge menu. Pretty crowded place. I liked it. Tried the mock meat garlic chicken.

This place seems to be incredibly popular with the locals and no wonder why!

The food is simply delicious and the menu is so varied, you won't repeat a dish even if you eat there for a couple of months!

The restaurant is well located and open all day. The prices are great and the staff will try to hep you finding out what's vegan and what's not.

For more detailed info: http://www.heartofavagabond.com/2013/11/the-top-2-indian-vegetarian-restaurants.html

We decided to stay in Penang for much longer because of the large choice of vegan restaurants. We went to this one at least 5 times and everything was really good. Their mock meat dishes were really well done with a true variety of textures and sauces. It can be disturbing if you go there for the first time so much it reminds real meat textures.

What we appreciated there was to be able to enjoy some indian dishes we use to have before being vegan (particularely the sauces) and the canteen like atmosphere of the place.

The staff is also really nice.

PS: ask about ghee, milk/yogurt, eggs and cheese before ordering if you mind as they use it in some dishes and in all the deserts.

The first thing to note here is that the address on HC is wrong and will lead you to the non-veg branch. The veg branch is half a block down the same street at number 25.

Whilst this place wasn't terrible, we weren't huge fans either. Why an Indian restaurant would feel compelled to use mock meats in their cooking, I have no idea. We ordered a dosa, a thali, a spinach curry, a vege curry and some random mock fish dish that they tricked us into buying (we thought it was a part of the thali).

The dosa was quite soggy and the sauces/chutneys had very little flavour. The thali was average too, nothing special or memorable there. The veges in the vege curry were all deep fried - eek! didn't touch that one. The spinach curry was pretty regular and the mock fish curry looked like a fish and when poked didn't move - in fact i tried cutting it with my spoon and it was very hard. My partner decided to keep away.. I tasted the curry-like sauce and it was ok, but not being able to identify what the fish thing was I decided to steer clear too (it looked like a whole dead fish, so not a real turn on).

The next day we both had reason to believe that the ingredients here were either not entirely fresh or that hygiene standards were slightly below par.

We have since realised that in Penang, the non-veg indian places seem to be preferable in terms of quality, so while we prefer to stick with the veg joints, we are making some exceptions here. Try Passions of Kerala in the New World Mall for banana leaf cuisine, or even Sri Ananda Bahwan in Tanjung Bungah (across from the Paradise Sandy Beach Hotel) - no idea if this is the same ownership as the one being reviewed presently but the food and ambience were much better there.