Dinner experience at Spice Route

Last Monday, Tania & I took Fran out to dinner at a restaurant called “Spice Route”. The restaurant is located in “The Imperial” hotel located on Janpath.

“The Imperial” is fast becoming one of our favourite hotels in Delhi.

It first opened its door in the 1930s, when India was heading towards independence.

It was a place where the well-to-do Indians & British could rub shoulders. It was also a place where those planning the independence of India (or break up, depending on how you look at it) would meet. Pandit Nehru, Mahatama Gandhi, Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Lord Mountbatten would meet at The Imperial to discuss the partition of India and creation of Pakistan. Apparently, the Nehru family had a permanent suite here.

The place has a very regal & old world feel to it. Everywhere you look there are old photos of the princes of old India, photos of stern looking soldiers in the valleys of Afghanistan, framed medals of campaigns long forgotten and old paintings of the monuments of India.

A drink in the bar “1911” takes you back to a time at the height of the British Raj. It is truly amazing.

But...I digress. The reason for coming here was to eat at the restaurant “Spice Route”. The restaurant has this amazing decor & has the feel of a truly classy restaurant. The menu we were given had a lot of menu choices: from Chinese, to Malay to Thai but, surprisingly, not a lot of Indian choices.

Seeing as how we wanted to show Fran a bit of Indian food, we asked if there was another menu with Indian choices. We were told that they had a Southern Indian tasting menu. They were most accommodating when we advised that Tania can’t eat seafood & provided chicken & lamb alternatives for her.

The meal was reasonably expensive (we expected nothing less) & we did have a bottle of wine but the professionalism of the staff, the surroundings & the tasty food made for a memorable night. We’ll definitely be coming back.

So...without further ado, some photos of the meal for your drooling pleasure:

Here's the menu we had



This is the entree course: Kerala-style beans, Kerala-style prawns & Kerala-syle sole fish



This is the soup we had: a lentil & tomato soup (very tasty)



This is the main course: prawns, chicken, fish, lentil dumplings & lemon rice (so tasty !!)



This is the bread we had: it's so light & fluffy !!