Madras Mantra could not be more of a hole in the wall unless the staff handed your takeout bags through one. Located in the far corner of a sprawling Goodwill parking lot off Lawrenceville Highway, wedged next to a nail salon, the restaurant is the kind of place you drive past a dozen times, never realizing it serves some of the best Indian food in Atlanta. The restaurant’s exterior is nothing to write home about, and the interior is the same story. But the smells that hit you when you walk through its glass doors — cumin, cardamom, frying ghee — are anything but ordinary.
The restaurant, which opened its doors in 2017, is part of the family-owned group that also created Madras Chettinaad, Bollywood Masala and Madras Cafe. All these restaurants are vegetarian and focus on South Indian cuisine. Madras Mantra’s speciality are dosas — thin, crispy rice and lentil crepes made with every filling imaginable. The restaurant dedicates an entire page of their menu to the different kinds of dosas patrons can order: from the fiery red garlic dosa from Bangalore, India, to the tangy Chettinad dosa from the Tamil Nadu region. And they don’t stop there: If you explore the Madras Mantra menu further, you will find dals, curries, biryanis and stewed vegetables that will make you rethink everything you know about meatless food.
My friends and I visited Madras Mantra on a Thursday afternoon, embracing the chilly November weather with the promise of a hot, well-spiced Indian meal. The restaurant’s humble setup of tan booths and yellowing tile floors is straight out of a ’90s diner, and a single buffet table feeds the whole restaurant. The ambiance feels comfortable and inviting — the kind that you would find at your grandma’s favorite hometown restaurant. Our group claimed a booth close to the buffet for close proximity to seconds, thirds and beyond, and we dug in.
I filled my first plate with dosa, mutter paneer, dal makhani, vegetable biryani, stewed cabbage with chickpeas and every starchy Indian accompaniment — white rice, naan, uttapam, pakora and medu vada, a donut-shaped savory bread made with lentils. Sauces and pickles lined the wall behind the buffet, where I added tamarind chutney to the side of my plate.
By my second plate, I had tried everything. And by plate three, I knew what to come back for: the masala dosa — crispy, buttery and filled with spiced potatoes — and the mutter paneer, tender cubes of fried cheese in a rich, tomato-onion curry. The buffet changes daily, but it always boasts a flavorsome dosa and a standout curry.
Madras Mantra is not just quality food — it is smart, with student-friendly prices. No à la carte dish costs more than $16, and a weekday buffet ran our group just $14.03 each. While a Chipotle bowl with guacamole will run you around $15.50, a filling meal from Madras Mantra will make you forget DoorDash exists with its great pricing and fantastic taste. Still, the steady flow of drivers picking up to-go bags from Madras Mantra signals that plenty of people have figured out how to get their South Indian cuisine fix without leaving the couch.
And of course, I had to have dessert before we left, so I grabbed one more small plate of gulab jamun, fried dumplings soaked in sugar syrup, and a sample of pal payasam, a creamy liquid dessert that was new to me. The payasam was a surprise hit, subtle but soulful — the kind of dish that reminds you why you walked through the restaurant’s doors in the first place.
That feeling, of discovering a new delicious food and enjoying old favorites, is what Madras Mantra provides: an opportunity to break from the chains of Emory Village cuisine and out of your comfort zone, beyond the routine butter chicken and garlic naan and into something regional and authentic. Their food makes driving to an out-of-the-way strip mall and sitting in a slightly-sticky booth seat worth it. For my fellow Emory students: Get out of our culinary bubble, go on an adventure and try some Indian food that’s not from the Dobbs Common Table for once.
