OUR visit to this South Indian success story presented a trip down memory lane.I was 19 again and in Tamil Nadu – India’s most southerly state. An earnest gap year student,I found myself teaching for a while in an orphanage where the meagre diet featured rice – morning, noon and night – and very little else.

In India they do some amazing things with rice: fermenting it with white lentils to make a batter for savoury pancake-like dosa, or steaming a similarly fermented mixture to make idli (a sort of dumpling). These dishes were very much special feast day treats, mind.

Like the children whose home I shared,I was very grateful for every meal, but boy did I miss my bread.I think I even began dreaming about it after a few months.

Just off the Boro’s Linthorpe Road once more,I was delighted to find a much more luxurious range of South Indian food on offer at the Dosa Houze.

Darlington and Stockton Times: Dosa Houze

Dosa Houze

And there was bread! Lovely Andhra-style naan breads – very like the naans we love, but,I think, cooked on an iron griddle rather than in a tandoor (clay oven).

Andhra refers to Andhra Pradesh,the South Indian state of which the capital is Hyderabad,the home city of the Dosa Houze’s boss, Sashi Kala.

I’ve only managed to eat delicious dosa once (in Glasgow) in the two decades since that Indian adventure, and had given up on finding any closer to home. So I was delighted when this oasis of South India in Middlesbrough was recommended.

Spread across two floors, it’s full of heavy wooden furniture painted with the same white-lined dots and swirls that adorn most of its glazed earthenware plates and bowls.

Be warned though: don’t go looking for the ubiquitous tikka masala or rogan josh.

But do pay it a visit with an open mind and a desire to try ‘curry’ that taste unlike anything you’ve had before.

It’s a good idea to ask for an explanation of the menu.

Anna and I both began with dosa – a masala one for me and a spinach and paneer (Indian cheese) filled one for her (both £3.25; main course ‘tiffin’ versions of each are £4.25) The potato filling in mine was a perfect blast from the past, while the palak paneer combination in my wife’s is a familiar favourite.

Both dosa came with a little dish of coconut and peanut chutney and one of sambar (a chili-infused thin broth like stew, and much less spicy than the ones I remember from India).

I also ordered a portion of idli (£3.25). Two rice dumplings with the same coconut and peanut chutney and sambar,together with a little bowl of melted ghee.

Main courses can be made up in various combinations from a range of vegetarian and non-vegetarian curries of the day, half a dozen of which were chalked up on a board brought to the table.

These options range from £5.99 to £12.99.

There is also a choice of thalis (rice or naan with various choices of three curries (ranging from £14.99- £18.99); or biryani – India’s answer to risotto (from £9.99 to £12.50).

Anna had seafood curry of the day (£8.99), which that night was prawn and egg. A big bowl of delicately flavoured curry packed with prawns and with three hard boiled eggs bobbing within. A lidded bowl of plain boiled rice (£2.99) sat alongside, with a papadum covering the whole thing.

The presentation was very similar for my “combination Andhra meal” (one veggie and one non-veggie curry with two naans, £10.99). A chicken-on-the-bone curry in one bowl, and the most gorgeous thick, buttery lentil and carrot dahl in a second.

The chefs in their open-plan kitchen downstairs may have spared the chili for delicate English constitutions, but the dishes were certainly not short on subtle aromas and tastes and stand as a great antidote to the oil-slicked identikit curries that make up the mediocre mass of UK curry houses.

In spite of being already stuffed, we managed to sample a mango kulfi (Indian icecream) and a payasam – a thick milk pudding with vermicelli and dried fruit(both £3.99).Both were nicely flavoured and good round offs, but the high points of the meal for me were definitely the savoury dishes.

A couple of Cobra beers, a fizzy water and a card a mominfused milky chai brought the bill for this blow-out to £48.45.

Service was okay, but more explanation and a slightly less erratic approach to table clearing from our pleasant young waiter would have been an improvement. Having said that, it was clearly a busy night.

So if you fancy a good value, well-flavoured curry with some welcome variations on the familiar themes, head south (Indian)to this gem in the North.

Ratings (out of ten): Food quality 8 Service 7 Surroundings 7 Value 8