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| - Indian Spices is a fairly new addition to the Cultural District dining scene. It's nice to have a good-tasting Indian option Downtown, and it's also nice to see a relatively inexpensive restaurant open here (expect to pay $7.50 - $14 for a dinner entree, or $7.50 for the lunch buffet.) Unfortunately, the atmosphere in the restaurant isn't as nice as I had hoped.
Good points first: We really enjoyed most of the dishes we had here. Pappadums were warm and crispy, with some sort of spicy seed baked into them (unlike the plain pappadums you get at a lot of restaurants here). Both the mint sauce and the onion relish were very nice. For our entrees, we both ordered dishes marked as "chef's specialties." I ordered a vegetarian entree with paneer and okra, which was perfectly-cooked: the paneer and okra had been sauteed with onions until both paneer and okra were slightly browned, but not overdone. This let the okra keep its flavor without getting the sliminess that okra can have. My husband ordered lamb pasanda, which turns out to be lamb in a sweet and spicy creamy sauce, with cashews and raisins in it. This was one of the most delicious lamb dishes either of us has had in a very long time. The garlic naan was good too; the garlic was cut in rough slivers and baked with the naan so that it had a roasted taste.
The bad parts of our meal: Samosas were not good: the outermost part looked and felt promisingly crispy/flaky, but the crust turned out to be a little bit gummy/chewy on the inside, which I do not like. Additionally, the potato and pea filling was distressingly homogenous and not very well spiced. But the accompanying tamarind sauce was excellent. (Maybe samosa chat would be better?) The restaurant itself is kind of cold in temperature and austere in appearance: the walls are all painted varying shades of grayish-purple, which I find oppressive, and the occasional small, kitschy wall hanging does nothing to relieve the overall foreboding aspect of the dining room.
Worst of all, the service was not good. Our waitress acted as if the presence of diners in her dining room was the only obstacle preventing her from attaining enlightenment. She was not very good at answering questions. When we asked what onion bhajiya (another specialty) was, she replied "onion rings." Upon looking it up later, I discovered that they are not onion rings. They are actually basically onion pakoras. Furthermore, she wasn't particularly attentive, and when we asked about dessert options, she gave us a disapproving look (me in particular) and said "Dessert?!" as if we should be ashamed to even consider eating more food in a restaurant.
All in all, we will probably come back here, since so much of the food was good, and that lamb pasanda was REALLY good. We will also probably stick mainly to the chef's specialty items, and we might order take-out next time!
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