Silk N Spice — Restaurant in Vancouver

I went there in January for a work-related dinner with the 2 UBC professors welcoming me in Vancouver. The restaurant made our first meeting in person quite special. Here’s my evaluation:

ROSES: Wheelchair accessible: you might need someone to hold the door for you, but there is no step between the sidewalk and the entrance door and even to get to the washrooms.

The complimentary chai tea while you’re waiting for your table

The short wait

The mega nice, elegant and diverse servers - they seem real when they talk to you, even when they’re repeating lines we’ve all heard before.

The decor

The possibility to try a little bit of everything

The atmosphere is very chill

The washrooms are beautiful!

There are many sittings but the place is so big that you’re not close to the next table and you can have your private conversations

It’s not noisy even when it’s full

There’s a huge piano, but that night no one played

The food is simply delicious

The ginger tea was so good, I’m still thinking about it. Nothing ever came close.

It’s downtown (I think. I don’t know Vancouver, but I took an easy bus so you can easily get there without a car

If you ask for food recommendations, the server will gladly help you!

I wanted to take out my dessert, but there is an ice cream in most of them, especially the one I really wanted. One server suggested that instead of falling back on something I didn’t really want, I should go for the dessert I wanted because the vanilla ice cream is just divine, and she would pack the rest of the dessert that she recommended to eat cold anyway,as culturally intended. Best advice ever. I ate the rest of the dessert on the next day: SO GOOD! Also, that vanilla ice cream? She was not kidding! Not your usual vanilla ice cream.

Sooooooo many vegetarian options Some vegan options too!

THORNS: 4 different servers came to us throughout the dinner. I’m an introvert. I would’ve been annoyed if I hadn’t been in such a good mood. That’s a lot of faces to memorize. But they were all so nice and easygoing. And they seemed to be introverts too!

BUDS: At the end of our visit, we received a small card inviting us to leave a review. I would’ve done it anyway of course, but I’m wondering if those cards were meant for people who don’t usually leave reviews. If that’s the case, maybe an incentive for them? Like a draw? Or free dessert?

Hire South Asian staff, too! After all you serve South...

0/10, go literally anywhere else.

Should change name to Silk and Sweet. Though the decor, music, chai tea, and ambience was second-to-none, after going through the entire menu I have to regrettably come to the conclusion that the food was very disappointing. All the Mediterranean/South Asian dishes were overly sweet (which is not usual) and contained no spice at all. Zero. The curries I've had time and time again tasted so strange with this crucial component missing. Even the dessert, gulab jamun, was overly doused in rose water and you could smell it before you even took a bite. It's as if all the food has been whitewashed for lack of a better word and sweetened to make up for bad cuisine. I know there are people out there who "don't eat spicy." If you are one of those people then this place is heaven for you and you'll love it. However, for myself and my partner, as diners of culture, this place's is food was disappointing and disrespectful to put frankly. I have never had to negatively review a restaurant until today, it is a shame that it had to be this place which we thought had so much potential.

If anyone with the power to change is reading this, please save this awesome location and help them achieve the flavours the world was blessed with through the Silk road and the spices that were traded to the western world. Help this restaurant live up to its name. If/when that day happens, we will be happy to give it a...

Service and ambience: 5 stars - Great service and ambience. One of the better places when it comes to overall ambience for an Indian restaurant. You are greeted with a chai sample when you come in and the servers are fast, efficient and courteous.

Food: 1 star - This is not Eastern cuisine by any standard. If you are visiting this restaurant for Indian/Afghan food - you shouldn't form an opinion of this being that cuisine in true sense. You will be sadly disappointed. Now, did the food I tried tasted bad? No. The reason for my rating is purely because of my expectations of Eastern cuisine and what I was served were very far apart.

Another observation - the food here is not fresh. We ordered chai and some rice bowls and we had it on our table in under 5 minutes. Probably this is their business model and to each its own - but if you are reading this review to get a glimpse of what to expect for Indian/Afgani cuisine - don't expect much. You will get an introduction to the flavors but the use of those flavors was either overpowering and/or used incorrectly. I see a lot of great reviews about this place and that's probably by those who haven't either been to those countries or haven't yet had the experience of trying...