Even With the New Vibe, Amma’s Hasn’t Lost Its Soul

Chicken 65 paired with a mango lassi at Amma’s South Indian Cuisine / Photography by Aaron Richter

It’s a Friday night at Amma’s, and I know right away that I’ve ordered wrong. Let me start by saying that the samosa chaat looked great on paper: a bowl of crushed samosa served over chickpeas with raita and a sweet-hot tamarind chutney. It’s street food, party food not often represented on Indian restaurant menus in Philly, so I’m excited to try it.

Except I hate it. From the very first bite, I know it isn’t for me. The texture is all off. Something about the crumbs on top of the thick layer of yogurt, the string-thin shredded carrot, the mushy shreds of samosa, and the stiff little chickpeas at the bottom of the bowl just doesn’t work.

So I do that thing where you mush everything up onto the sides of the bowl to make it look like you’ve eaten more than you have. I try to move some of it to my napkin, but raita is basically a liquid so that’s how I end up in the bathroom trying to blot yogurt off my pants. And while I’m in there, all I’m thinking is What if it’s all like this tonight?

What if I hate everything?

Whole fish with grilled pineapple at Amma’s

But that’s not how my night goes at all. Because by the time I sit back down, the servers are already dropping at my table double-butter dosa and idli like small, white rice-flour UFOs with smoky-hot sambar. On the TVs behind the bar, they’re showing motorcycle racing, and all around me the dining room is starting to fill up with groups wandering in off Walnut Street, and I forget about the chaat almost immediately because now there’s just so much more to eat.

And I love it because this is Amma’s — a new Amma’s, in a new space, with a new vibe — and after a while I remember that Amma’s has never left me disappointed. Or at least not for long. One bad plate? One ruined pair of pants? That’s just a hiccup here, a temporary interruption, an awkward pause in the running conversation of a meal that gets put firmly in the past the minute the next plate hits the table.

Back in the day, when Amma’s was on Chestnut Street, it was my go-to Indian spot. It was small, simple, spare, crowded, sometimes slow in a way that made it maddening if you were in a rush, but it was always reliable, straightforward with no fuss. It had an almost workmanlike steadiness that made it good for every occasion. Plus, their Chicken 65 was one of the best I’d ever had.

The new spot on Walnut Street is different. Bigger, more polished — gorgeous, actually, with dark woods, a fish tank bar separated by glass from the main dining rooms, and banquette seats around a central pillar (left over from the old Max Brenner design) that spreads into geometric wooden beams that make it look like you’re dining under the spreading branches of a very precise tree.

Service is scattered, but charming. Things show up when they show up. And the Chicken 65 is different here too. Still long-marinated in ginger, garlic, coriander, and turmeric, still deep-fried, but served now with a squeeze of lemon and tossed with loose scrambled eggs that stick to the hot chunks of chicken almost like the filigree of an egg-heavy French batter. It is no longer so simple. No longer so unadorned.

Which is the truth of pretty much everything at this 2.0 version of Amma’s. Owners and chefs Sathish Varadhan and Bala Duraisamy based their early menus on Tamil and South Indian dishes cooked by their mothers (amma is Tamil for “mother”). It was all about memory and warmth. And over the years what it has evolved into here is a deeply traditional Indian cuisine given a modern makeover and served in the old chocolate mecca that once was famous for serving shots of straight chocolate in giant syringes but now seems the ideal showcase for cute, tart-sized poori filled with spiced potato and mint; for fusion pizza dosa served on uthappam flatbread or butter dal speckled with chili oil.

A pepper swimming in Malabar curry

On a bright and lazy Sunday, I wash up alone at a two-top for beer and a bowl of thick Chettinad stew rich with coconut milk and sharpened with fennel and whole red chilis that float threateningly on the surface. Amma’s makes this in multiple versions (lamb and mutton, vegetarian, two kinds of chicken), and it is hot but not hot-hot, sweet but not sweet-sweet. It is comfort in an earthenware bowl, spooned out over perfectly fluffed rice, and I have been eating Amma’s version of this South Indian dish, in all its permutations, on and off for years.

Rose milk falooda at Amma’s

This time, I have the roasted chicken variety, and here, in this new home, it is the same dish I remember from 2019 when I first tried it. The bowls are different now. So is the table I eat at. But the stew is exactly how I recall it — warm and filling, punchy with spice and with that alien sting of licorice that I want to chase all the way to the bottom of the bowl. Amma’s menu has always been long. This one is even longer, full of deep cuts like Malabar curries and lamb cooked with sorrel leaves, baby eggplant soaked in tamarind and curd rice mixed up with yogurt and punctuated with green chilis and mustard seed. But the stew is a welcome old friend. Like Amma’s in general, it is a known thing — solid and reassuring. So ahead of the crowds and with the staff still quietly setting up the dining room, I sit in the soft, fading sun and eat without thinking. Without worrying. Just relaxing into the ease and familiarity of flavors I’ve known for years. Because while so much about Amma’s has changed with this move to its fancy new digs, those things that have always defined it have not. The service still moves by its own clock. The food is prettier now, but no less comforting. And even if something goes wrong — if you can’t eat the samosa chaat and end up with yogurt on your pants — you don’t have to fret too long over it. Just wait a few minutes. Watch the motorcycles on TV. Breathe.

Because something better is always on the way.

3 Stars — Come from anywhere in Philly

Rating Key
0 stars: stay far away
★: come if there are no other options
★★: come if you’re in the neighborhood
★★★: come from anywhere in Philly
★★★★: come from anywhere in America

Published as “Moving On Up…” in the July 2026 issue of Philadelphia magazine.