Anye S.
Yelp
Actual rating is about a 3.5 but rounding up for nice "date night" ambience and really good palak chaat.
We're quickly finding out that as a whole, people in MD have no spice tolerance and the restaurants are catering to that. Almost every Indian and Thai restaurant we've been to has had no detectable heat to any of their dishes (even when labeled "medium spicy"), and Spice Street was no exception to this trend. I'm not exactly one of those "I will suck down this bottle of hot sauce to prove my manliness types" especially given total absence of Y chromosomes, but I've found that you have to have SOME heat to your curry for it to have full flavor. A former chef explained it by saying most places pre-mix the spices for each dish, so if you say you want less heat - you get less of ALL the spices and ergo less flavor.
Well, here, they didn't ask how spicy we wanted it, and boy was it not spicy. We ordered the chicken korma (usually not super spicy anyway) and lamb methiwala. The chicken korma was very sweet and creamy, but not spicy. The lamb methiwala had so much potential in its flavor profile but just not enough intensity. I was hoping that by taking home the leftovers and letting them marry, they'd build up a bit - but the next day they tasted roughly the same. I had them along side a homemade lamb & goat curry that had so much more "oomph" to it....sigh.
For drinks, I had a rose lassi. I am a *sucker* for rose. The lassi was pink, but I could barely taste the rose. I think the yogurt just overwhelmed it. Hubby had a cocktail, I forgot which one, and he really liked it.
Overall, the palak chaat was the winner - it wasn't spicy either, but didn't need to be with the dates and the tamarind paste giving it flavor and the flash-fried spinach giving it crunch. If we come back, I'm going to ask for the curries to be spicier and see if that helps. Both of them had potential but just seemed a little washed out compared to what they could have been. Subtle is good for innuendo but I like my curries strong, like my coffee and my personality!