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| - Having to eat gluten free these days, I was really hoping to find a new restaurant I enjoyed and can eat at safely. Nope on both counts. I would like to point out to you review readers to remember to read reviews carefully. If they are superlative without offering many specifics, or the details tend towards telling you what things cost and special offers and overspecific details about the owners/managers, you might want to take the review with a big ol' salt lick.
Bombay Spice is somebody's idea of making Indian food more accessible and healthy. What did they do? They deconstructed the cuisine, breaking it down into components (meat or veg mostly) and sauces (korma, tikka, etc). They took out the cream and ghee (butter) and the MSG (you may not know it but many Indian restaurants use MSG). The meat is cubed chicken breast and fish. There is no paneer. The enjoyment you derive from this menu comes exclusively from the self-congratulatory superiority you feel from eating bland-ish, deracinated "indian" food. If you are a celiac like me, you eat there because you can and there are few alternatives available.
The waitress was pleasant and friendly, but utterly unknowledgeable about Indian food. Bombay Spice advertises itself as an Indian restaurant healthy alternative with gluten free options. This means that staff must know their way around Indian cuisine, basic nutritional issues, and the gluten-free diet. She lacked these understandings and didn't know what paneer is.
Oh, and she talked us into eating this chickpea ceviche. I am weary of hummus and chickpeas on restaurant menus - the reason you are seeing hummus everywhere is because it's cheap to make - but my dining mate wanted this, so I caved. Allow me first to be certain you know what ceviche is - it's fish marinated in chilis and or citrus and or garlic and onions and herbs. BS's version of chickpea ceviche was this huge pile of chickpeas covered in this gloppy, sweet, pinkish-gray sauce. We were told it had onions and tomato, and with diligent searching, we each found one tiny (3 mm) cube of each in our dish. It was all chickpeas and sweet, yogurt-based glop. This was a rare time I could not quite figure out what was in a dish by looking at it and tasting it. Was it chickpeas mixed with Yoplait blueberry yogurt? Perhaps. My friend ate two bites and apologized to me for wanting to order it.
We also got the pappadums as a side with some sauces. There were 4 sauces offered - tamarind, mint-chilli, "red," and a yogurt raita. They supplied 2 tiny spoons for the 4 sauces. We needed a couple more tiny spoons. The sauces were ok-ish, but the "red" sauce tasted pretty much like hot paprika mixed with water and oil. None of them were memorable. The portions were very small, less than 1 tablespoon of each sauce, except maybe 3 T of the raita.
Our entrees were acceptable in flavor. The sauces were tasty and close enough to what you'd expect. They were just meat and sauce. There was a problem though - my gluten-free entree came with triangles of bread surrounding it. Even a crumb of bread makes me ill - this is why I'm so careful about eating out and don't eat in restaurants that don't understand the restrictions of the GF diet. Bombay Spice advertises its gluten-free options. This is why I was here. The manager was friendly and accommodating, but once something like this happens, the cat is out of the bag, and I know the kitchen staff doesn't understand the GF diet, and they've probably thrown flour and bread crumbs everywhere and taken no precautions against cross contamination of bread-ish things into the other food. I was now on notice, and my bellyache 2 hours later confirmed I'd eaten more than a crumb of gluten.
At some point my wine glass was refilled gratis which was nice of them as an apology, but it won't make things right for my intestines, which unfortunately can't eat any gluten and won't heal for 2 or 3 days. Can somebody tell me why so many of the reviewers on here claim that $6/glass wine is a great deal? It's not. The BS wine list is full of bottles that retail for less than $10, meaning their glasses cost them $1.50 each, and many other restaurants charge less for wine. I got a $2.95 glass recently in a restaurant, and that's their regular price for house red.
Finally, the decor is dull - medium brown wood chairs, typical restaurant bench-ish seating, a long shotgun of a dining area with a semi-open kitchen. Not a place to go if you like interesting spaces. Overall, this place is a dud.
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