Lucinda O'Sullivan's Ireland

About The Restaurant

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.

From the dosa listings, eschewing Kari Dosa, which winked at me with its stuffing of egg and spiced dice chicken, I had Ghee Podi Masala Dosa – an enormous triangular crispy brown pancake stuffed with tasty spiced spuds so perfect and satisfying. We then moved on to a delicious bowl of Paneer Butter Masala for me – the cottage cheese cubes sitting in a bowls of fenugreek flavoured creamy buttery tomato gravy. Fenugreek is one of my all-time favourite spices – and I’d go back for that alone – divine. Bayveen had Chilli Chicken an almost Indo Chinese style dish of battered chicken tossed with onion and bell peppers, smothered in garlic, soya and chilli sauce, which she loved, and had with Iddiyappam traditional South Indian steamed rice vermicelli.    

When it comes to soft drinks, there’s Mango Lassi (the popular combination of mango pulp, milk and yoghurt), as well as Neer More (buttermilk infused with ginger and curry leaves). Popular soft drinks and bottled water are there too, of which we had two bottles. There are also a half dozen wines – three white and three red – and by the glass a Chilean Paulita Sauvignon Blanc or Cabernet Sauvignon – and not forgetting Cobra, Kingfisher and Heineken 0.0 beers.  

And finally, they do superb takeaways, delivering to surrounding areas. So put your feet up and enjoy!
 

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