Restaurant Review - Indie Spice Sandymount
Thursday 27 January 2011
Sandymount has recently had the addition of a new Indian restaurant in the form of Indie Spice. When I say ‘new’ it is not a totally new concept but rather a new branch of a long established group. Indie Spice started out with a restaurant in Belfast about twenty years ago and, in recent years, they expanded to Swords and Naas, where they seem to be popular neighbourhood restaurants. I visited the Swords branch a few years ago and wasn’t particularly impressed or blown away feeling that it was very much a High Street traditional curry house restaurant. I was hopeful with Sandymount that they might have moved on a bit food wise when they saw the competition down here. We have a few excellent Indian restaurants in Dublin which offer Indian food which is sophisticated and contemporary in its approach and style, in line with Indian restaurants in London such as Benares owned by Michelin starred Atul Kochar, Tamarind, or the cracking Amaya on Motcomb Street. The Indie Spice Sandymount website certainly conveyed these ambitions enthusing of it as a “place to experience modern Indian food at its best. The ambience is stylish and contemporary and filled with vibrant colours.” Certainly the upmarket borough of D4 is an area inhabitated by worldly denizens who probably would appreciate a top notch, top nosh, sophisticated Indian restaurant, however, Indie Spice have stuck with the more traditional style neighbourhood Indian restaurant approach.
Located over the local Spar shop on Sandymount Green the entrance hall with its disabled lift was certainly impressive but when we got upstairs we were in a big badly lit room, with what looked like dark blue wallpaper, filled with lots of utilitarian black ash tables very close together. To the right was a canteen style stainless steel open kitchen hatch and counter. The windows were covered with dark wood lattice Indian screens but little Granny scratch scratch red curtains and pelmets reminded me of a scene from the TV show Eastenders recently, when characters Ahmed and Zainab Masood were decorating their new Indian restaurant, and one said to the other “why do Indian restaurants always have to look like your front room”?
Starters €5.50 - €11.95 included popular stalwarts such as samosas, pakoras, tandoori prawns, chicken tikka, mahi mahi and so on. Brendan went with sheek kebabs (€7.95) which were what they were, minced lamb/beef spiced and served with a bit of lettuce, shredded carrot, a lemon section and a splosh of dipping sauces on the plate. I tried the prawn and chilli cake (€8.45) described as warm water tiger prawns, ginger, garlic, scallions, fresh coriander, minced and fused on crunchy croutons. Sounds great in theory. Not sure what they meant by “fused on crunchy croutons” but they were two large well padded ‘rissoles’ – very filling and stodgy and all tasting a bit ‘wooly’.
Mains are listed in different sections with “All Time Favourites” offering chicken and lamb curries €14.95/€15.95 – Korma, Rogan Josh, Do Piaza and so on. “Chef’s Recommendations”, which always begs the question does he not recommend the rest, run from €16.95/€22.95. Biryanis are there, and Seafood Dishes too warrant another section, the latter being the heavy hitters at €21.95/€23.95 for Malabar monkfish and Goan fish curry and so on. I had Jhinga Dum Achari (€21.95), which had four fine big prawns, smothered in a ton of sauce, whilst Brendan had Chettinad Chicken (€17.95) which was a pleasant enough curry but pricey sans rice. With these dishes we had side orders of Brinjal Achari – aubergine –(€6.95), which was nice, and we shared one rice (€2.45)! here wasn’t any great presence on the floor and the staff, whilst pleasant enough, didn’t strike us as very experienced and any staff we spoke to hadn’t great English, which wasn’t their fault. There was quite a push to sell drinks before we ordered, which we warded off until we were good and ready to have our bottle of Argento Reserva Malbec (€22), bringing our bill with optional service to €96.00.
A neighbourhood Indian restaurant which, when it settles in, will probably be a welcome addition to the area.
Indie Spice Restaurant,
23/24 Sandymount Green,
Dublin. 4.
Tel: (01) 232-0220
THIS ARTICLE WAS FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE SUNDAY INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY, JANUARY 23, 2011.