Like a hug from an old friend, Spice Hut's offerings are familiar and warm. This is one of my…read morego-to places to eat. Our most recent visit to Spice Hut was on Thursday. Whiskey and I, preparing to go see some live music downtown Campbell River, stopped in for a dinner.
Spice Hut is a small franchise Indian restaurant, with three locations on Vancouver Island and six in total across western Canada. And while I'm not familiar with the other locations, the one here is quite consistent with the food. The only variance is the spice level, which seems to change on a whim depending on the mood of the cooks that day. Sometimes I will order a dish with a medium level and I sweat and struggle to get through the meal (I have no aversion to hot food, I often go out of my way to indulge in it, in fact) while other times it has just a trace of warmth. The flavours are always bang on, however. Seasoned perfectly, (which is good because you wont find salt or any other seasonings to adjust your food on the table) this Indian food is rich and flavourful. It's not exactly what I would would call Indian home cooking, but it's not some kind of western fusion either, it's somewhere in between, Indian cuisine for western palettes, with generous use of cream, garlic and somewhat surprisingly beef.
Portions at Spice Hut are large. Often I will order a dish, then add basmati rice and/or naan bread. This tends to, more often than not, end up with me taking half home with me for a midnight snack or lunch the next day. A curious quirk about this place: When you ask to take your unfinished food home with you, they don't wrap it up or container it for you, the simply drop some styrofoam takeout containers on your table and expect you to pack it up by yourself. This isn't exactly what I would call warm facilitation, and I found it a bit jarring the first couple times, but its a nuance of the place I've become used to and have come to accept.
We started with chicken pakora, as we almost always do, to set our appetites as we waited for our main course. The tender uneven sized pieces of chicken coated in chickpea flour and dusted with spices were good, as the always are. Not mind-blowing or anything, but good. They serve this with an amazing green sauce (mint chutney?) of which we ordered an extra portion for good measure.
On this most recent visit I ordered the Daal Makhni, a vegetarian dish of kidney beans and lentils with a rich mix of butter, cream and tomato sauce spiked with garlic, ginger, and Indian spices. I selected a mild-medium, this dish has a heat at the front of the mouth and on the lips, unlike some of the building heats of an Indian curry dish, and sometimes ordering a medium requires me to consume it a bit slower than my rumbling stomach wanted on this occasion. I mentioned the variance in heat earlier, on this particular occasion the mild-medium Daal Makhni had almost no heat whatsoever. I wasn't disappointed, as the flavours hold up on their own, but I would have preferred just a touch more warmth. Added on to this I ordered a portion of naan bread. I love this. Crispy in just the right amount, served hot, it's the perfect blend of chewy and tender with a fantastic taste of fire.
Plating at Spice Hut is spartan is say the least with almost no garnish or flourishes, bordering on cafeteria cheesy. Naan comes in plastic baskets like you would find in a oceanside fish and chip joint, and the stoneware is stark white. This doesn't bother me in the least however, sometimes letting the food speak for itself is the way to go. The ambiance of the dining room is nice enough, clean with accents of Indian art scattered throughout. One small thing, that always draws my eye in a negative way are the menus. Single fold orange and red, they are laminated and often dirty with greasy finger smears. The drink menu is smattered with advertising product logos reminiscent of a race car at Daytona.
Our server was great (Laura?). She recognized us right away (we haunt this place often) and greeted us with the right balance of banter and professionalism, being attentive to our needs at the right moments without hovering over our table and leaving us be to our privacy when we obviously enraptured in conversation. I really can't find any fault with this particular waiter's service on this or any other occasion we have been lucky enough to get a table in her section. I can't say the same the same for all the servers there. Not that the service has ever been terrible, by any means, but not quite up to the telepathy and promptness of this one.
Although there are a few gaps in the overall experience, I keep coming back to Spice Hut for the consistently good food. Comfort food. It's not somewhere I'd take someone to impress, but it's somewhere I would have no problem pulling up a seat alone or with good friends to enjoy some warming, overall good Indian grub.
Cheers and bon appetit,
D.
