Madurai Idli kadai

Perhaps the best South Indian food in town! The pongal and idli are just yum! Bad service and seating arrangement though.

Disgusting food ! I don’t know how this place even runs ! It’s this tiny place with really bad food ! Never going there ever again !

Good food but atrocious service. This review is for their service. They really should do something about service; else the crowd will go to the next good restaurant. Ordered Togo and was told to come in 20 mins. Went there after 30 mins and they asked me to wait for a further 15 mins. I wasn’t even sure if I ll get it on that said time as others were still waiting and my order wasn’t even yet on their radar. I canceled my order and walked out.

The sweet lassi was too good! There are very few places which serve sweet lassi with the proper consistency. This place was a delightful surprise. I would definitely come back!

Good food but bad service! The place cannot accommodate enough people. Management should work on improving the restaurant experience.

Food is 4 start but overall experience of eating here is pathetic. Absolute chaotic management. Take a a Togo order and don’t waste time waiting for a seat forever as its complete mess. They shud have a wait list or name call for seating.

If you want good South Indian food, come here. If you want a decent place to sit out ambience, go somewhere else. We come here often, and its the good that keeps us coming.

Waited for 30 mins in queue for ordering and then given the answer that they are no more taking orders. None of the staff had the minimum decency to tell us this earlier so that we could have left much early. Never going back again!!!

Taste is good. But management of customers is horrible.
I ordered food but I had not got table yet. So I asked them to delay my order until i get the table. But they ignored everything and just gave my food. We had to stand out holding plate. It does not matter how awesome the food is, I feel service is equally important. I always avoid going to this place.

Excellent South Indian food. It gets crowded almost all the time and their service and place cannot handle the guests.

Extremely Poor service. Food is good, but expensive for the place and service received.

Good food, bad service with crazy lines. You are mostly stuck in the line even if you called for a to go. I avoid this place like a plague on weekends.

After a long tiring day, we decided to stop here for dinner. Don’t be fooled by the bright light board written in tamil outside. The food is awful with pathetic service. It took them an hour to get two plates of mini idlis and coffee. Portions were very small for the price. Dosas were not cooked properly and sambhar tasted of chlorine for reasons I do not know. Would have given zero stars if possible.

Ok. This is by far the worst Indian food I have had in the United States.
First, we ordered «mini idlis» and we didn’t receive it for more than an hour.
And after repeated requests we got micro mini idlis which couldn’t have satisfied even a little kid’s hunger !
Secondly all the dosas, sambar and chutney did not taste good. The dough did not have salt and over fermented.
We had to return it.
Thirdly, the service was poor. I had to ask them repeatedly for a cup of coffee.
Overall, the experience was v bad and I would never go back. Nor would any of the people who dined with me. Being a tourist to the Bay Area, I tried other South Indian restaurants which were much much better !

I was disappointed with this place after all the hype about how amazing this place is. the place is very very very tiny… can probably accommodate 30 ppl but there are at least 60 at any given point of time. The food was mediocre… a south Indian place that has bad filter coffee…
We got the idli sambar… vada and the upma idli vada combo… with 2 filter coffees…
Idili sambar was OK. Rest were forgettable…
This place is not for u if u r uncomfortable in tight spaces… u sit at a table u probably share with someone else…
Over all… wayyyy over hyped place for a so-​so food and experience. The bright part is the staff is cheerful and try their best to keep up with the crazy demand they have…

Terrible, terrible service. Do not go to this place if you want your food at a reasonable time. The food is tasty, but takes forever to arrive. Both times we have been there, we waited more than 45 min for dishes like pongal which should not have taken this much time.
The front counter is highly disorganized, and people who walk up and keep reminding the kitchen staff about their orders are the people who get their food first.

Great food. Great price. Bad service. Will keep coming again though.
They do the best they can. They’re very busy and terribly short staffed. The food is great though and cheap too. $ 7 for idli/​vada dipped in sambar. I can imagine this would be a popular lunch spot for South Indians. Best South Indian food in the South Bay.

Pros: tasty South Indian vegetarian food.
Cons: poor customer service. We had two bad instances. One the place was too crowded and they don’t know what they are doing and asking people to change their order to take Togo.
Second instance is we went at 9:45 and the closing time is 10pm. We were waiting in the queue to order food. They were so brave to tell us that there is nothing available to order. He didn’t even felt sorry for that or apologized. He said its close to closing time.
Go here only if you want to taste decent vegetarian food. Not customer friendly.

My go to restaurant for the best idlis in the bay. They are consistently soft and well made. The sambhar and vada you can get with the idlis are also perfectly done!
Favorites on the menu are: mini idlis, rava dosa, onion chili utappam, poori chole and kesari bath.
It’s a hole in the wall often packed so get here early to find a table. Usually first thing we do as we wake up is head here to grab some authentic South Indian breakfast.

The Indian restaurant scene in Northern California appears to be much more vibrant than the one in Southern California. In So Cal, you can’t find a single restaurant that serves Indian breakfast food like idli, vada, or paratha before 10am, possibly due to low demand. It seems like Indian restaurants in LA are more obsessed with buffets so they align their opening hours to coincide with the beginning of lunch time (11 or 11:30am).
I’m an early bird, so when I found out about a South Indian café that starts serving traditional breakfast at 8:30am, I knew I had to make a detour and stop here.
When we arrived at exactly 8:45am, about 90% of the tables were occupied and a long line had formed behind the cash register. This café is a small hole-​in-​the wall operation with self-​seating and counter service. We were very lucky to snag the last table available. Yup, the early bird gets the worm.
We ordered the «dipped idli-​sambar» and a «paneer dosa». I don’t have much experience eating idli except at buffets where they’re usually stale and hard as a rock. Here at Madurai, the idlis were smaller, ultra-​soft, and required minimal chewing effort to consume. The texture was less spongy than cake, and instead more like melt in mouth. It was made possible due to being dipped in an accompanying bowl of sambar, or lentil stew, which contained just right amount of spices. It had an amazing balance between sweetness and spiciness, plus didn’t taste heavy. The sambar was several notches better than the ones served in LA’s South Indian restaurants, which tends to be either too sweet or way too hot.
Madurai’s paneer dosa was prepared reasonably well, although not perfect. It was stuffed with grated paneer in addition to very tasty onions, I enjoyed dipping it into the tomato chutney condiment. This dosa was very flavorful without being oily, which is evidence of excellent home-​style cooking. The only aspect that I didn’t like about the dosa was that it wasn’t very uniform, some parts were paper thin and crispy while other parts were mildly chewy and rubbery.
I finished the meal with a cup of filtered coffee. You have to walk up to the kitchen window and ask for it, because it’s assumed customers drink it after instead of during the meal. I was disappointed to see that each cup was not prepared individually in a steel tumbler like it is served in India, but rather it was dispensed from an airpot into a paper cup. Still, Madurai’s filter coffee managed to be pretty darn good because of its strong aroma and unique nutty aftertaste. It was as milky as a latte and carries a lingering chicory aftertaste that was extremely addicting.
Inexpensive, simplified menu, home cooking, open early, counter service, hole in the wall, easy to get in and out. Madurai Idli Kadai meets all the criteria of a restaurant that I like to visit. I will definitely return the next time I am in the area again.