Vaigai Restaurant Review

I had been to this South Indian restaurant Vaigai in Sunnyvale recently and would like to share my thoughts. Last weekend was not the first time I have been to this restaurant, I have had food here once before when they had just opened the restaurant.

The menu here is more or less similar to the menu in every other South Indian restaurant here in the bay area. My husband and I didn't like the restaurant that much after our first visit and that was primarily because of the high price (every dish on the menu is atleast a $1 more) coupled with low quantity of the dish that we ate. We decided to give this restaurant a second chance last weekend.

From our previous visit, we remembered liking the curd vada and ordered that along with fried idly and a couple of combo meals. My husband wanted to order channa batura and the waiter told us that it wasn't available only for us to see another waiter walk past us and serve someone else the same dish just a few moments later.

The curd vada was brought in first and the vada tasted old and whole dish was terrible, it was nowhere close to what it used to be. It costs about $6 for two relatively small old vadas dipped in plain yogurt. Instead of bringing the fried idly next the waiter ended up bringing my main course alone. After a few minutes the mini idly fry was brought in and they had no distinct flavor and once again stuff tasted old and despite being coated with red chilli powder they were not even slightly spicy and the coconut chutney ended up being watery. The fried idli was $6 and it came with very little sambar and coconut chutney and this is by far one of the worst dishes I've ever had.

We were already quite disappointed at this point and my main course was there getting cold and they still hadn't brought my husband's main course. After reminding the waiter his food was finally made it to our table. The combo which costs nearly $10 had 1 plain dosa, 1 vada, 1 small idly and a little pongal with coconut chutney and sambar looked more like rationed prison meal rather than something that you would expect to be served at a restaurant. My husband managed to get onion+tomato chutney but I didn't even though we ordered the exact same dish on the menu. The idly was okay and some parts weren't cooked that well, same was the case with dosa and it was pretty small as well compared to what you get in the other restaurants. The vada was fine and the pongal was very average. It was worse than the pongal that I normally make at home!!

At the end of it all, my husband and I were more disappointed with this restaurant compared to the previous time we dined here and we still wonder how they manage to give low quantities of not so great tasting food and charge more than the other restaurants?? Well, whatever it is we won't be going to this place ever again.