I visited All Spice restaurant in Trivandrum which is owned by the same team who owns Supreme Bakers some time ago after hearing good reviews about it from a couple of colleagues/friends… Also I had visited All Spice at Kollam once when I went there to attend an event regarding a movie I worked in… The place basically reminded me of my old office cafeteria as it has that same look and feel to it, except for the part where in the office cafeteria it was a self-service system whereas here there are waiters to help you get your food… Basically I was looking at my photo album in my phone and found the pics from this place that I had taken and hence writing this now…
The menu of this place is a multi-cuisine menu, as in you have the mix between traditional Indian dishes which they call “Hindustani” with some amount of Arabic (grills) and Western dishes ranging from steaks to burgers and sandwiches… I found the Hindustani menu intriguing as rather than how we usually find dishes in restaurants usually, what this one had was a list of platters… Eg, rather than say Roti, Naan, etc and Paneer Makhni, Chicken Tikka Masala, etc as separate items in the menu, here it was a bunch of platters where say for example an option I found was Butter Naan with Chicken Tikka Masala, which if you order you’ll get one butter naan with a small cup full of the chicken tikka masala consisting of two pieces of chicken and some gravy, just enough to eat the given naan with, and some green salad… I decided to go for one of the available platters…
But, before going for it, I felt like taking a soup from the continental menu and tried one of my all time favourite soups, which is the Cream of Chicken Soup…
Well, mixed feelings about the soup, cause it was so thick that felt more like a chowder… Taste-wise its ok, just average I would say, just like the same from any other place, except for a slightly higher amount of sweetness… But whats different is that unlike the other places, this thing has quite a lot of chicken than you would normally expect…
Now coming back to the Hindustani menu, among the various options I went for the Chicken Lababdar with Laccha Paratha platter…
The dish as shown in the pic came with one full Laccha Paratha (two halfs) and a bowl of the Chicken Lababdar curry and some green salad to go with it all… What can I say, this did make up for the soup… The paratha was incredibly soft and crispy at the same time (the edges) and it literally melted in my mouth… The curry felt like a combination of flavours from both the Murgh makhni and Chicken Tikka Masala all mixed into one, which came with two pieces of chicken with its gravy, topped with some fresh green chillies, ginger, coriander leaves and some fresh cream(which I think could’ve been avoided) as shown in the pic… It tasted great with the chicken cooked perfectly…
The next one below is from my visit to All Spice in Kollam as unfortunately it was not available at the time I visited the place in Trivandrum, but its there in the menu…
This is basically a version of the Orange Cream Cooler, but without blending the ice cream together with the orange soda… I guess could be called an ice cream float and they use the softie ice cream for this 🙂 Anyways, I forgot the name mentioned in the menu (I think its called Orange Fizz or something like that in their dessert menu, will check next time and update)… I found it to be very refreshing… The problem with this beverage is that you need to drink it as soon as it arrives as waiting will cause the ice cream to split, which in turn appears to split the soda as well (you see that graininess slightly beginning to form in the above pic) and it won’t be a pleasant experience once that happens…
Even though I had mixed feelings about the soup, it seems that the people here know what they are doing when it comes to the Indian food that they serve… Recently my parents went there and had Pav Bhaji, which they said was definitely the best one they have had in Trivandrum… The quantity was just right for me to enjoy the food… I will be going there again soon to check out their other platters and lets see how it goes 🙂
UPDATE: The Orange beverage is called Orange Fizzy in their menu as reminded by the music director of the movie, with whom I visited the All Spice in Kollam 🙂
