Reviews

Sunday Tasmania
February 12, 2006
By Graeme Phillips

Cooked the Indian way

REVIEW: The Spice, 16a Princes St, Sandy bay, Licensed/BYO Dinner seven nights 5-10pm, lunch and shortly an all-you-can eat luncheon buffet Mon-Fri plus weekend salad bar. Takeaways 6223 8382

The only weight-control regime I've ever known a mate to employ is the sweat loss he encourages by eating chillies.

Lots of them, any and every which way, but preferably in Indian food.

"Have you been to Spice in Sandy Bay yet?" he asks.

"No."

"Well you should."

"So you keep telling me. What should I have?"

"Whatever you like. I've been through most of the menu and haven't been disappointed yet."

"Unlike most of the other Indian places around, whose menus seem to be photocopies of each other's, spice is different - different dishes from different regions."

So we went. And were happy we did.

The Spice is different - double starched linen cloths, a rosebud on each table, an adequate wine list and the professional service all warranting the slightly higher prices on a menu which, extending to a Tendulkar century of dishes, contains many offerings not seen on Indian menus elsewhere around town.

We had a selection of vegetarian entrees ($9.90), fish Amaritsari ($18.90), lamb Firdoos curry ($17.90), beef vindaloo - my benchmark dish ($17.90), raita, excellent naan and a couple of fresh chatkare lajavab accompaniments as well as a generous serving of basmati rice.

It was all very pleasant.

But ask the manager and chef what their favourite dish on the menu is and they'll reply "none of them".

"We don't eat from the menu at all," says manager Karan Vinayak, here from New Delhi finishing his IT masters at uni.

"The food is far too sweet for our palates. Butter chicken is one of the most popular Indian dishes, as well as back home.

"But serve the sweetened Australian version in New Delhi and they'd throw it at you."

"We need to tone down the spicing for our customers," says Chef Devi Charan Sharma.

"So I use less of all the spices, fewer chillies, sweeten some dishes with sugar and with tomato paste in others. All Australian Indian restaurants do the same.

Mango chicken was invented at an Indian restaurant in Melbourne. We'd never think of serving such a sweet-sour dish in India," he continued, his point emphasized by a "yuck" from Karan.

They then brought two bowls of the food they were cooking for their own dinner - a dhal (one of the best I've had anywhere) and a chicken tikka masala, both much more fragrant and freshly spicy against the background fruitiness and warmth, not heat, of chilli, the different spice flavours, again not the heat, tingling in your mouth for ages.

Beautiful, even to my wife's less chilli-tolerant taste.

Devi uses the same five basic "gravies", as he calls them, for the restaurant and their own meals, but alters the amount of spicing.

"It's not just a matter of tossing in a few extra spoonfuls of chilli," he says.

'Thant can ruin the dish. It's about balance and spicing according to the style of curry you're cooking.

"And, of course, in India, we always leave meat on the bone to add extra flavour."

Karan says: "When we have and Indian family in the restaurant, we let the kitchen know and Devi cooks their food the authentic way from scratch."

The good news is that they will now do the same for anyone who asks, not just to "make it hot", but cook it "the Indian way".

On our experience, you'll be very well rewarded.

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