Southern Indian cuisine is a favourite of mine ever since the day, more than forty years ago on my way to college in Kent, I stopped off at Euston and wandered down Drummond Street in search of a good lunch.

Before Brick Lane there was Drummond Street, where a community from Southern India set up home in the 1970s and restaurants such as the inimitable Diwani were born, serving their dhosas and wonderful all you can eat vegetarian Southern Indian buffet (it is still there - and well worth a lunchtime diversion if you are anywhere in London).

Before then I had only known Knor curry and a couple of visits to the highly exotic Indian restaurant that opened in my town in Wales a few months before I set off for uni. When I moved to that borough after graduating it became a regular haunt, along with other dhosa houses in Ladbrook Grove and Southall.

Roll onto the nineties and I found myself running a company with a large base in Chennai, which many still call Madras, where I could taste the wonderful food from this part of the subcontinent at first hand, in homes, at weddings and in restaurants. It surprised me how much meat was eaten, but I still erred towards the dhosas. It has spread as a main meal all over India. now you are as likely to find a dhosa house in Mumbai as you are in Chennai.

For those of you not familiar with this wonderful foodstuff, it is a crispy pancake made from split urad lentils and gram flour with pounded rice, blended to a paste and cooked on a skillet and then filled, usually with a potato and onion filling, then served with coriander, coconut and chilli chutneys and a sambal - a gravy with chopped vegetables. I am salivating as I write. There is also a version with cheese in it.

Like stuffed dumplings, pancakes have versions found in many cuisines. In South America, arepas are made from maize and filled with cheese, meats, or avocado. If you've been to Tutu's in Palmer Park, you will probably have tried injera, a staple in Ethiopia and Eritrea made from teff flour (although it is arguably a flatbread). 

Of course, Europe is home to crêpes and galettes whilst the Dutch have poffertjes - small, fluffy pancakes often dusted with powdered sugar and served with butter, and in Eastern Europe, bilins are small, yeast-leavened pancakes made from wheat or buckwheat flour, are traditionally served with caviar or sour cream (or smoked salmon in our house).

Some pancakes veer towards omelette territory - Japanese okonomiyaki are a savoury pancake made with flour, eggs, shredded cabbage, and various toppings like pork, seafood, and mayonnaise. And then, of course, there are the thin wheat pancake wrappings for hoi sin and roasted duck found in Chinese restaurants.

All of this said, I suspect some Indian readers will wince at my description of a dhosa as a pancake, but it otherwise fails comparison.

When I first moved to Reading I quickly discovered Madras Flavours (or Taste Of Madras as it was then called) and regularly popped out for lunch there. They also did a great weekend buffet (which these days is only available at breakfast time, boo hoo).

Then it abruptly closed, and remained closed for several years before miraculously re-opening. My lunchtime treat was restored. 

So, on a grey summer day after a business meeting at the bank, I could not prevent myself from dropping into the restaurant, which is sited in an interesting part of town where Jackson's Corner is gradually re-opened, there are various bus stops where the buses now flow a bit more smoothly after recent road works, the library is closing down and the Magistrates court is moving into the old EY building. Madras Flavour has almost become a staple amongst all the changes. And thankfully the restaurant has large windows, perfect for people watching when you're dining alone.

Rather predictably, I had the dhosa masala, a giant roll of crunchy loveliness, along with a mango lassi.

Masala dhosa is one of those dishes that are always good. There are other dhosa restaurants in Reading  - Crispy Dosa opposite the Penta at the town end of Oxford Road and Ved up at the top of Basingstoke Road - I noticed that Papadam's down the road is now also advertising dhosas. But the ones at Madras Flavours remain my favourite, if only in the way some people prefer Pepsi to Coke or profess a preference for a fish and chip shop in a seaside resort.

Dhosas come stuffed with a cumin and tumeric potato mix and accompanied by sambar, a sharp gravy-like veg curry made with asaforitda and tamarind, it is also accompanied by tomato, coconut and chilli/coriander chutneys or sambal (yes, sambal and sambar). It's a complete meal for under a tenner. And it is large - I have never finished a whole meal and they even used to do a truly giant dhosa, which I once had delivered. It arrived out of the back of an estate - if they had tried to deliver it by courier half the meal would have been on lamp posts.

The trouble is that it's not a meal that survives delivery. The potato quickly makes the pancake soggy and it's fiddly serving lots of little dishes from plastic pots. Better to pop down to King's Road and watch the world go by.

The lassi is thick and sweet and passes for a dessert in my book. Not the best lassi ever, a bit over sweet, but thick and sharp and creamy nevertheless.

For around twelve quid, a great meal before heading out into the wind and the scattered rain, longing for the warm sun and gentle breeze off the Indian Ocean. Food does that to you, doesn't it. Close your eyes and the flavours and textures take you back places. From the backstreets of Camden, to a beach house outside Pondicherry to the main street through Reading. There are even days when I hanker after Knor Curry, the pot noodle of my youth...