Our Latest Great Place To Eat - Southern Spices
Tuesday 06 February 2024
Southern Spices is a fab South Indian restaurant in a large clean cut casual kitchen style space. An urban setting, facing two apartment blocks, it’s obviously very popular already with many people working and residing in the area with big smiles on their faces as they came and went during our visit. Not being a local, even with a SatNav I was trying to find it for a while before I eventually rang and discovered it was directly behind Aldi, which has a great carpark, and a sidewalk leading up to it.
It's been opened by a chap called Paddy Gaffney in partnership with Vijay Anand – ex Pink Salt in Bray – with the Head Chef Vidayadharan Panchanathan and his team delivering on an extensive menu of all your favourite dishes from a dozen street food small plates including mini podi idly (little savoury rice cakes with a podi masala dipping sauce); chilli paneer; and chicken vepudu – boneless chicken marinated with South Indian spices infused with yoghurt and curry leaves. There were chicken and paneer kathi rolls in a buttery flaky paratha with peppers, onions and green chutney; and six varieties of dosa – which are hot to trot at the moment. That’s all before you get to mains including biriyanis and thalis, butter chicken, lamb Madras or pepper fry, and a range of vegetarian mains.
Kerala crispy prawns were always going to catch our eyes and they didn’t disappoint. I liked the fact that the tiger prawns were simply flavoured with garlic, chilli and fenugreek, and not wearing bullet proof vests of batter and seasoning as you see in so many cases – just the spices and the crustaceans speaking for themselves with dressed leaves and a mint dressing. With these, they kindly brought us some Paniyaram Paddu to try – tasty little pan-fried dumplings made with fermented rice and lentil batter, served with coconut chutney.