The magic of Sri Annapoorani in South Jordan – Gastronomic Salt Lake City

This is the best Indian food in Utah; and its not particularly close

To say that I have eaten a lot of Indian food in my life would be an understatement.  My entire family was born in India, and I grew up in the San Francisco Bay area, which has one of the largest concentrations of South Asian people outside of India.  I ate Indian food for three meals a day growing up; I was a kid who brought a tandoori chicken sandwich to school and talked about why the best curries were made from goat neck, much to the disgust of my first-grade classmates.  I have always had trouble going out to eat Indian food; the generic orange curries and overcooked vegetables didn’t remind me of anything I had growing up.  The bar for indian food is high, and I had low expectations for Salt Lake City, a place where less than 5% of the county identifies as any type of Asian.  

Then I went to Sri Annapoorani.  Named for the Hindu goddess of food, the restaurant opened in 2025 in South Jordan.   Indian food can be mind-numbing in its geographic variety; from the mustard-based fish dishes of West Bengal, the rich and savory curries of Punjab, and the curry leaf-based soups of southern India, the number of different cuisines from varying states rivals any country on the planet. 

Sri Annapurani hails from the latter tradition; the head chief and co-owner Aishwariya Raghavendra was originally from the tech hub of Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore) but grew up in Tamil Nadu, the southern-most state in India.  She grew up learning cooking from her family’s catering business, and after moving to Salt Lake in the 2010s, she began selling food out of her kitchen to friends and family with a business called “Aish’s Kitchen.”  Word of her food spread, business was booming, and she had aspirations of opening her own restaurant.  Once a space opened in South Jordan, she partnered with the owners of the Indian chain Munchkart to create Sri Annapurani, an Indian restaurant specializing in vegetarian dishes from South India.`

The first meal I always use to introduce someone to South Indian cuisine is the masala dosa, a thin crepe made from fermented rice and black lentils filled with heavily spiced potatoes. The dish is served with several coconut-based chutneys designed for dipping, along with sambar, a spicy lentil curry made with tamarind, coriander seeds, chilis, and fenugreek.  The dosa at Sri Annapurani is both pliable and crispy, exactly as it should be.  There are many varieties of the dosa, but if you like it spicy, get it with Podi, a spicy ground mixture of lentils, curry leaves, sesame seeds, and a hefty heaping of dried red chillis.  One of the dishes you will get at Sri Annapurani that you won’t find anywhere else in Utah is the benne dosa, a hyper-regional delicacy from Raghavendra’s home state of Karnataka.  Unlike a regular dosa, the benne dosa is made with the addition of puffed and parboiled rice, and is cooked in butter instead of oil.  The dosa is much thicker while retaining a characteristic richness and crunch.  I have only seen the benne dosa in places such as the Bay Area and New Jersey, where there are large concentrations of Indian immigrants, and the Sri Annapurani version is as good as any I have had. 

For someone wanting to try the gamut of South Indian food, I would recommend coming for lunch to get the thali, loosely translated to tray in English.  The thali contains 6-8 distinct dishes that rotate depending on the day of the week.  In my visits to the restaurant, I have had many variations, including vathal kuzhambu, a tangy tamarind curry, vazhaipoo vadai, or banana blossom fitters, and ada pradhaman, a dessert made from rice, coconut milk, and sugarcane.

Sri Annapurani is the premier Indian restaurant in Utah, and as someone who has tried almost all of them, I don’t think there is much competition.  Please go, and don’t be afraid, there isn’t any butter chicken.        

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Ryan Duggal is a board certified OBGYN and Addiction Medicine physician with a passion for food and stories.  He is originally from San Francisco, CA, and currently splits his time between Salt Lake City and Pine Ridge, South Dakota, where he works as a physician for the Indian Health Service on the Oglala Lakota Reservation.